Jazz: A Tasteless & Unorthodox Introduction
a selection of classic & contemporary records
Jazz is the worst. It’s either impotent easy-listening elevator noise or pretentious formulaic musical masturbation. At least ninety-five percent of modern Jazz, both live and recorded, falls into one of these pathetic ruts.
So-called Straight-Ahead Jazz is nothing more than a technical exercise in regurgitation. Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis are turning in their graves at the drivel that is being performed in their honor. The chief premise of Straight-Ahead Jazz is that 1959 was the cutoff for artistic progression and genre development. Don’t misunderstand: the music that come out of the late fifties is the stuff of legend…But, in the words of Keith Jarett, we have to learn to forget music—otherwise we become addicted to the past. (Interview in Der Spiegel, 1992).
Then there’s Jazz’s floozy sister-genre, Smooth Jazz, which is as far from any working definition of art as possible. Art pushes boundaries, patience, and proper taste—Smooth Jazz, by design, is bland, stale, and comfortable to a fault. Smooth Jazz aims for sexy ambiance and instead induces yawns and underwhelms listeners the world over. It is as if RnB’s late-century slump melded into Jazz’s similarly timed decline and created a black hole of sonic detritus—sucking in well-meaning artists and listeners and sending out a shitstorm of music-like noise. Let us not forget that Smooth Jazz is the single reason that most reasonable people detest the saxophone, and especially the squeaky, nasal soprano sax.
The state of Jazz is poor; just look at its public representation. Jazz brunch at the neighborhood coffee shop. Solo piano at an upscale eatery. Jazz in the Park local artist showcase. A standards trio playing a late-night bistro set. A suburban concert hall featuring this year’s crop of Jazz students. Kill me now. Kill me right fucking now.
It shames me to say that I love Jazz. I hesitate to tell people that I listen to such a genre; images of a slimy Kenny G or campy Maynard Ferguson come to mind when Jazz is mentioned. And for good reason, because artists like these have sold countless records and influenced untold numbers of aspiring dipshits (read, Jazz musicians). But, there is an intense cutting edge to the genre that makes up for all the incompetent noise. For all the hate that I dish out for mainstream Jazz, my admiration for avant-garde Jazz is exponentially greater.
Jazz has always been fertile soil for experimentation. The only constant in the artistic stream of Jazz history has been a series of intense personalities and extreme standards of execution. Jazz’s heritage includes every one of music’s greatest improvisers to date: Sidney Bachet, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Keith Jarret, Ambrose Akinmusire, et al. Jazz has created a language for musical expression that can interpret any other musical approach and create something greater than the sum of its parts. Jazz is dynamic — live performances leave listeners lurching to the edge of their seats, ultimately leaping into the air with cackles and howls after magnificent musical passages.
Avant-Garde Jazz captures, better than any other genre, the power of abstract expression. It is easy to dismiss the chaotic bellowing of a Free Jazz LP — and some Avant-Garde music is nothing more than several musicians dicking around in a recording studio. But, the most interesting “abstract” music achieves something more than traditional music. Abstract art gestures to relatable experiences, be them physical, emotional, social … In listening to the music, a listener can interpret the sounds created by the band through their own lens, their own experience, in a way that more prescriptive music can’t provide.
The biggest problem for well-meaning Jazz artists is, obviously, the genre’s ever-worsening reputation. But, the second obstacle is the general public’s Jazz illiteracy. The language, structures, and forms present in Jazz are not heard anywhere else. Classical music, which faces similar difficulties, has inroads with pedestrian listeners through film scores. Many classical fans found their way quite naturally from the ubiquitous John Williams to the eccentric Richard Wagner.
Jazz has no such avenue for exposure. Perhaps this is why book after book has been released on the subject of Jazz history. But, the problem with the standard chronological approach to Jazz introduction is that the earliest years of Jazz coincide with the earliest sound recordings (read: “worst sound recordings”). Besides that, the Golden Age of Jazz provides little by way of engaging material for the modern Jazz-enthusiast, as Jazz from this period was really just Pop / Dance music. The difficulty in diverging from a chronological list is that historical context is necessary for appreciating Jazz music as it progressed through the decades. Or is it?
The list of albums you will find here forges a new path in Jazz introduction. I’ve attempted to curate a formative collection that teaches Jazz fundamentals as it simultaneously exposes the most unique sounds in the genre. This list first presents solo recordings of Jazz instrumentalists, then transitions into group recordings.
Solo records highlight the paradigm of Jazz artists as composer / performers. Since the early days of Jazz, idiosyncratic technique has been as much a part of a song’s arrangement as melody and harmony. Here, you will experience the most skilled performers taking their respective instruments to their tonal limits. Solo records also introduce new listeners to the guts of Jazz performance on each instrument. When you hear trios, quartets, and other groups later in the list, the context of each instrumentalist will have been established beforehand.
Another note on this list: you will not necessarily find popular records on this list, nor records with widespread critical acclaim. Instead, this list is made up of creatively important works, without consideration for commercial viability. This is not to say that the following LPs are obscure or subpar, just that I’ve tried to create a collection here that inspires new listeners and encourages Jazz veterans to look outside the genre’s standards. So without further ado, here are twenty (or so) Avant-Garde and otherwise cutting-edge Jazz records to wet a budding appetite for America’s greatest cultural export.
Solo Jazz Records
Solo Monk by Thelonious Monk (1965, Columbia)
Thelonious Monk was a polarizing artist when he rose to bebop prominence in the nineteen-fifties. In a genre increasingly focused on speed and complexity, Monk’s off-kilter, dissonant approach was either a breath of fresh air or a pathetic, second-rate pianist’s attempt at keeping up without doing his homework. The old guard especially questioned Monk’s approach (Swing stalwart Count Basie was particularly disenchanted by Monk’s playing). For those open-minded few, however, Thelonious Monk was a visionary — a fully realized ideologue with an artistic approach totally his own.
Monk’s aesthetic is particularly similar to traditional ragtime, with the chief difference being the tempo. Monk pioneered the slow, waltzing rag, with an embellished darkness previously hinted in Scott Joplin’s masterful dance tunes. Solo Monk is performed with an exaggerated, almost hesitant, melodrama. With rhythms swaying in and out of meter, Monk’s usually clunky style is more boorish than ever. Without the excitement of a full band to share the stage, Monk gives us an intimate and highly idiosyncratic collection of performances that is not to be missed. My recommendation is to imagine a time when Monk’s work was the stuff of controversy, hard as it may be with his now universal adoration.
Solo Guitar by Ted Greene (1977, Art of Life)
Ted Greene is a relatively unknown figure to the general public, but a universally beloved guitarist’s guitarist — which is, admittedly, a bad sign. Maybe this is due to his untimely death or the fact this he only recorded one album. That aside, Greene produces a rich, warm tone from his early-run Fender Telecasters — which are known for their out-of-phase and twangy timbre. Greene achieves his saccharine sound with a manual vibrato (by forcefully bending the neck of the guitar back and forth), a healthy dose of reverb, and a virtuosic finger-style technique. Greene caresses the Telecaster’s strings with just the right amount of pluck from his soft, meaty fingers.
The Jazz standards on Solo Guitar are peppered with flourishes of arpeggiation and an intoxicating use of pinch harmonics (a harp-like extended guitar technique). Greene also plays blazing fast chord patterns, typically descending down the neck of the guitar, which never come across as braggadocios but still have an impressive weight. Given Greene’s consummate tastefulness on his instrument, I think more common-folk should be familiar with his work, rather than a few nerdy guitarophiles.
Garden by Cecil Taylor (1981, Hathut)
The opening moments of Garden feature Avant-Garde pioneer Cecil Taylor’s trademark performance art oratory (for lack of a better description). Do not be dissuaded by the air of bleeding-edge experimentalism, because Cecil Taylor is a world-class instrumentalist, a master of composition, and a consummate performer. Though he may have attempted to unlearn his classical piano background (scorning musical academia for its creative short-sightedness), the refined sensibility of classical composition remains an anchor of Taylor’s improvisatory approach. Dense chords, which contain within themselves a diffused melody, whiz past at an almost incomprehensible speed; motifs are introduced and called back; dynamics wax and wane in an arc not dissimilar to a narrative … Be captivated by Garden, and let Taylor introduce you to a new world of musical possibility, a world where brutish rhythmacism and erudite harmony intertwine like never before.
19 [Solo] Compositions, 1988 by Anthony Braxton (1989, New Albion)
Anthony Braxton is an Avant-Garde woodwind pioneer, having recorded all sorts of strange music over the years¹. 19 [Solo] Compositions, 1988 features as many short saxophone performances, which run the gamut from sweetly melodic, to intensely rhythmic, to bloodcurdlingly experimental — although most are somewhere in between these three creative bases. Braxton has an ear for cadence and motif, while not sticking strictly to a traditional understanding of tempo and melody. It’s worth pouring over each of these fascinating pieces with several play-throughs, as Braxton has opted not to make himself redundant (although he does run the risk of going over the heads of less careful listeners). As soon as you catch on to the structure of a particular track, Braxton pulls the plug and promptly moves on.
¹ Braxton recently provided his extended techniques to Wolf Eyes, a contemporary Avant-Garde Noise-Metal trio with the most visceral and sonically painful recordings in the game. Their collaboration was entitled Black Vomit, and features two works: The Mangler and Rationed Rot. As per usual from Wolf Eyes, it’s fucking brutal.
The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett (1975, ECM)
It was almost midnight in the Cologne (Köln) Opera House when Keith Jarrett took the stage. Exhausted, ill-prepared, and sabotaged with a small, out of tune piano from backstage, Jarrett nevertheless went on before a sold-out crowd to play an entirely improvised set of solo piano music. This creative exercise (or cruel joke) put Jarrett into a fresh headspace as he composed some of the most moving, passionate music of his career. Rather than relying on the epic reverberation and depth of his usual Bösendorfer 290 Imperial Grand piano, Jarrett forces life into this comparatively pipsqueak instrument by doubling up his bass lines and punctuating his chords with arpeggiated flourishes.
Jarrett is a lyrical pianist, whose playing evokes a distinct yearning, an emotional pull. Something about the way that Jarrett embellishes his chords is awe-inspiring; he is certainly the farthest thing from a cold, precise, technical instrumentalist (and I don’t know how to put it other than that). Nevertheless, Jarrett is also a brilliant improvisor, and a fine example of the Jazz genre’s ability to cultivate improvisatory artists to their potential. His head is brimming with compelling musical ideas that he can explore live onstage — and that’s the appeal of The Köln Concert, Jarrett’s free expression. So, it’s a fortuitous thing for music lovers that Jarrett compulsively recorded all his live performances with the highest quality equipment and personnel from ECM records, or else this magnificent night would only exist in the collective memories of the Opera House audience. It’s also fortuitous for Jarrett and ECM, as the recording of this night in Cologne has gone on to become their best-selling album.
/////EFFECTUAL by Jamire Williams (2016, Leaving)
Jamire Williams is a sought-after Jazz session cat, providing his drums to a wide variety of Jazz and RnB artists. In his own time, however, Williams dives headlong into the Avant-Garde scene as a renaissance man of both concert halls and arts gallery showrooms. /////EFFECTUAL, Williams’ most recent solo foray, features an abrasive, compressed tone on both acoustic and electronic drums. This tonality, which is understandably off-putting for many listeners, creates a consistency and voice for the project beyond Williams’ already idiosyncratic compositional voice. Williams is a masterful solo performer, utilizing the drum set as a palette of sounds, rather than being confined by popular conventions. This is true of every great Jazz drummer, and I would add that an artist’s tonal variety is a great metric for their competency on a Jazz trap kit.
The liner notes state that Williams’ kit includes Roland triggers and a set of Ghanaian drums. West African influence is hardly new in Jazz music, and Jazz’s connection to the continent as a whole is a recurring theme — from Duke Ellington in the thirties and forties, to Sun Ra and John Coltrane in the fifties and sixties, to the AACM in the seventies, to aTunde Adjuah today. However, Jazz has a significantly less illustrious history with electronics (vis. Williams’ digital sound triggers). But there are bright spots, like late-career Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and many promising contemporary artists (Williams included). /////EFFECTUAL is not the only great solo percussion record in Jazz, but it’s featured here for its raw originality. Take it in with an open mind and you won’t be disappointed.
A Different Time by John Medeski (2013, OKeh)
On A Different Time, John Medeski performs somber, atmospheric compositions on a 1920s French Gaveau piano. The Gaveau’s action is stiff, and the hammers can be heard creaking and thumping with every keystroke. Gaveaus have perplexed musicians for decades, because alongside this clunkiness is a gorgeous, singing reverberation. No other piano can create the delicate hazy atmosphere that naturally lifts off a Gaveau. So, “normal” piano technique and repertoire are useless on this strange instrument; that’s why Medeski composed the entire album specifically for the Gaveau. In fact, his Funk-Jazz trio Medeski Martin & Wood is known for its quirky instrumentation; glass-slide bass guitar, toy pianos, an assorted set of cowbells, distorted clavichords … So, A Different Time is simply Medeski doing more of the same — in a very different way.
Ones All by Dave Holland (1995, VeraBra)
Upright bass (i.e., “double bass”) solos are quintessential to the Post-Bop Jazz scene. Knowing audiences hush their voices and lean in close to hear the bass’ every whisper, click, and buzz. The low rumble and round tone of a double bass is completely unique, and stand in stark contrast to the nimble horns, piano, and drums which share the bandstand with the black-sheep bass. The double bass has a compelling and emotional sound when freed from its usual time-keeping duties and set loose to explore a composition solo. Perhaps this is why bass solos are such a memorable part of a Jazz gig: the bassist has to be choosey, and that judiciousness can be a refreshing change of pace.
With Ones All, Dave Holland takes the bass solo to another level: full LP length. Chords, melodies, even percussion are present in Holland’s tasteful presentation of the double bass as a solo instrument. The album offers beautiful ballads and astonishingly uptempo tunes — a full range of expression. Performing alone for an hour on such an unwieldy and large musical tool is a daunting concept for most instrumentalists, but Holland’s ambition is rewarded with a critically lauded treasure. If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder why more bassists haven’t done what Holland has, and create a healthy repertoire of solo double bass performance!
Alone by Bill Evans (1968, Verve)
Bill Evans is an influential pianist. That is to say that his approach has been dutifully reproduced by musical xeroxes since his major-audience début on Miles Davis’ seminal Kind of Blue. The phrase “ahead of his time” comes to mind, and it really only means that Evans was copied by unoriginal, second-rate musicians after his most influential years. For this reason, I don’t listen to Bill Evans’ legendary trio, or most of his group work. It’s impossible for me to enjoy his originality with fresh ears — mine have been irreparably tainted by the better part of a century’s uninspired and half-assed Straight-Ahead Jazz.
Put Mr. Evans in a studio alone with a piano, however, and he blows everything else out of the water. Bill Evans creates a sound that conjures conflicting responses: somehow both delicate and lush; politely dignified and powerfully emotional; easy-going and captivating. Alone could easily play in the background of a formal cocktail party, providing ambiance for vain conversations about status and facade. But, give it an honest listen, and it will fuck with your head. Evans is a master of the piano and a fully realized genius of composition. Listen once, twice, or a hundred times, and you still won’t have a real grip on what Evans is doing on these seven deceptively sweet songs.
Solos by Max Roach (1977, Baystate)
The best Jazz drummers are often described as “lyrical” percussionists. While this sounds like an oxymoron, it’s true in an abstract sense. While drums and cymbals aren’t usually tuned to notes or chords (in a traditional sense), they can certainly be evocative of melodic structures, or imply melody without fully embodying it.
Max Roach was one of the best lyrical percussionists in the game, playing with a strong sense of tonality, not just rhythm. This short collection of solo trap set compositions showcases both his lyricism and his tightly honed technique. I’ll just say that the man can move drumsticks at a mind-blowing speed. His dynamic control is also impressive, making the drums whisper at one time, and shout a moment later. This record, more than any other on this list, may be difficult to procure (I had to make due with a YouTube-based bootleg), but it’s certainly worth the time and energy spent searching. Max Roach was at the same time a champion of Jazz musicianship and civil rights, and his legacy will not be soon forgotten.
Group Jazz Records
Duets
The Seasons by Ben Wendel (2015, Ben Wendel)
The Seasons is a twelve-part episodic project featuring a new duet partner for woodwind musician Ben Wendel every month from the year 2015. Every piece was performed as a field recording, videotaped, and released on YouTube, rather than on vinyl or MP3. All the compositions are Wendel’s own, and while he describes the pieces as chamber music, I’d argue that The Seasons is chamber music through a Jazz lens (which is, admittedly, as Jazz as it gets). Wendel astutely adapts each composition to the performer joining him for that particular month’s piece — a compositional technique introduced by early Jazz innovator Duke Ellington (and more evidence that The Seasons is decidedly Jazz music).
It’s one thing to perform solo on a saxophone, it’s another altogether to coordinate with another instrumentalist on a piece of music riddled with byzantine unison passages. August (with saxophonist Mark Turner) is a particularly impressive and beautiful piece, with most of the tune consisting of doubled-up leap-frogging melodic acrobatics. The two instruments are absolutely lockstep in a thick, punchy articulation of notes which seem to come from nowhere, and yet neither man so much as flinches. If their chemistry weren’t so genuine, they would come across as competitive, embroiled in a battle of Jazz showmanship. Instead, like all the pieces in this collection, they both bring something to the table to create a work greater than either of the two could achieve alone.
Interstellar Space by John Coltrane & Rashied Ali (1974, Impulse!)
Recorded in the year of Coltrane’s untimely death, Interstellar Space was left in the Impulse! record label vaults for seven years before its official release. What is contained on these obscure studio tapes is another instance of Coltrane’s constant innovation as he moved farther and farther from the Straight Ahead Bebop that originally made him famous. Coltrane and Ali shred, Free Jazz style, for thirty-five minutes with a ferocity that’s closer to today’s Noise Rock (a la Zach Hill) than sixties Jazz. The pair play tirelessly, pushing each other faster and louder, faster and louder, until they reach a fever pitch and promptly conclude the record.
Interstellar Space stands out as a particularly polarizing release in the Coltrane canon: either his most self-indulgent/LSD-fueled dribble; or a revelation, Coltrane’s most daring step into uncharted artistic territory. Either way, one cannot understand John Coltrane, the man, without considering his late-life Avant Garde work, which cost him both professionally and personally beyond measure. His bravery to pursue new forms of art, even though it alienated him, should be roundly admired.
Trios
Spiritual Unity by the Albert Ayler Trio (1965, EPS-Disk)
Spiritual Unity is Avant-Garde saxophonist Albert Ayler’s magnum opus. It’s small-group, low-volume Free Jazz. The trio is quiet, intimate even, while still maintaining all the insanity you’d expect from a formless, experimental Jazz recording. In a study of contrasts, Ghosts’ anthemic saxophone line (played overtop frenetic bass and drum noodling) begs for lyrics or some additional meaning. Ayler instead leaves listeners with a cryptic track title and the context of the instruments to decipher some sort of message. I’m not one for free association or instrumental story-telling, so to me, the music is the message. But, don’t limit your imagination if it wants to take you someplace special.
Spiritual Unity is also a working example of the high-level musicianship necessary for quality Avant-Garde Jazz. Ayler, bassist Gary Peacock, and percussionist Sunny Murray give compelling performances, even without conforming to any traditional constraints on their respective instruments, or relying on a large group of other performers to add to the chaotic experience. They are agile, expressive, tonal, dextrous, and spiritually united in a vague, Free Jazz way.
Circuit Rider by Ron Miles (2014, Yellowbird)
Trumpeter Ron Miles is known for his judicious less-is-more style. With Circuit Rider (and his prior record, Quiver), Miles employs a rhythm section known for the same qualities: Bill Frisell on electric guitar and Brian Blade on the drum set. Together, this tasteful trio shuns self aggrandizement and instead constantly points to one another. Miles has cultivated a beautiful humility between three masters of the craft. The end result of Miles’ leadership is a dignified, raw, smart, and emotional LP that’s deceptively simple.
What I appreciate more than anything else about Circuit Rider is its subtle grittiness. Miles, Frisell, and Blade could easily perform with tonal uniformity and clean execution, but that would leave the record lacking the depth and humanity that it so beautifully exposes. There is a sad single-dimensionality to classy, tasteful music. I, personally, don’t ever want to relax and listen to music — it should challenge and push me, like any worthwhile art. Circuit Rider manages to present something intelligent and soft while also keeping the listener on their toes and never quite at ease.
Quartets
The Bad Plus Joshua Redman (self-titled, 2016, Nonesuch)
The Bad Plus is a piano trio (piano, bass, and drums) that breaks more than a few Jazz traditions. They’re a collective, a leaderless trio that plays compositions from any of its members indiscriminately. They are light on improvisation, sometimes playing several meticulously arranged songs in a row. They don’t swing, or at least they rarely swing their rhythms, and instead play with a more rock and roll feel. They cuss a lot, but they don’t do drugs. They solo, but they don’t sound like Bird or Coltrane’s arpeggiated exercises. They play pop standards, but not Jazz standards. You get the idea.
This project finds Iverson, Anderson, and King employing the legendary saxophonist Josh Redman in a brand new set of compositions, as well as a couple Bad Plus favorites. Redman integrates himself into the deeply idiosyncratic approach of The Bad Plus and the trio, likewise, reforms around him. Pianist Ethan Iverson particularly adapts his playing to leave room for Redman to contribute his acrobatic melody lines. The group does not, however, leave out their characteristically dizzying rhythms, performed with a syncopation (i.e., off-beat patters or odd-meter cycles) that should be labelled with a bright yellow disclaimer: For your safety, please remain seated for the duration of the record.
Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny (self-titled, 2016, Nonesuch)
Trumpeter Cuong Vu has developed a cult following from certain Jazz listeners while serving as horn-player in residence in Pat Metheny’s award-hoarding big band (known simply as the Pat Metheny Group). Obviously, Metheny wanted to sit in with Vu’s dark, minimalist, Avant Garde trio and lend his characteristically soft and sweet guitar to round out the group’s sound.
Metheny doesn’t follow the standard course for rhythm guitar in a small Post-Bop group, which would normally involve lots of chords and very little melodic lines. Instead, he emulates Vu’s approach on the trumpet, and contributes mysterious arpeggiated structures that hint at odd, dissonant chords while never fully revealing them. The trio, meanwhile, does what they do best — namely, play badass dark Jazz with massive dynamic changes and fear-inducing dissonance. The songs have a cinematic arc, often building from a barely audible whisper to a cacophonous clusterfuck.
Quintets
Yesterday You Said Tomorrow by Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (2010, Concord)
Yesterday You Said Tomorrow is a rich, lamenting, 21st-century take on Cool Jazz. It is bandleader aTunde Adjuah’s first foray into Stretch Music; a musical concept that challenges soloists to look forward as they form their phrases. They look forward to the end of the phrase, obviously, but also to the end of the solo, and how that solo section sits in the arrangement of the entire song. This mindset creates a cohesion in the tracks on this record that is absent from mainstream Straight Ahead Jazz, where the only defining factor in a composition are the (chord) changes and the hook line (called the head).
Yesterday You Said Tomorrow is a politically charged record, with track titles that confront race relations, law and order, American idealism, masculinity, femininity, and more. These controversial topics springboard aTunde Adjuah’s compositional creativity, with many tracks serving as instrumental journeys, spanning huge swathes of energy, intensity, beauty, and depth. The emotional complexity is not aTunde Adjuah’s alone, however, as every band member bares their heart with deeply personal performances (including Jamire Williams on the trap set).
When the Heart Emerges Glistening by Ambrose Akinmusire (2011, Blue Note)
Award-winning, critically-acclaimed, sought-after trumpet virtuoso Akinmusire’s Blue Note records début is a cathartic waterfall of weepy ballads and other intensely serious music. It’s a shame that a well-produced record is tarnished with such ill-conceived album art — especially from the iconic Blue Note label, whose album covers are the standard for the genre. But, I digress.
Akinmusire puts a focus on solo performances from his band of brilliant young musicians, and since I didn’t include a solo trumpet album in the Solo Records list, please accept Regret (No More) as a four-minute masterclass in compelling trumpet performance. Listen to it fifteen times in a row and it’s almost like having a whole LP of Akinmusire’s coiled pipe of brass, which he commands unlike anyone else ever has.
Bird Calls by Rudresh Manhathrappa (2015, ACT)
Now for a Jazz record with strong Eastern influences: Indian saxophonist Rudresh Manhathrappa’s Colman Bird Hawkins tribute. Manhathrappa brings a distinctly Indian approach to tonality and rhythm on his sax, creating a marriage of traditional Indian Raga and American Jazz that leans on the best of each genre.
Manhathrappa’s quintet plays with a fire under their collective ass, as if propelled to greatness by their leader’s epic dexterity and intellect. This effect is not dissimilar to that of Bird, whose bandmates struggled to keep up with the improvisational prowess of the all-time greatest on the sax.
Big Bands
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Charles Mingus (1963, Impulse!)
Charles Mingus is known as one of the great composer/performers of the twentieth century. His ability to draft talented young musicians and create a repertoire that facilitated the unique personalities of his crew was second only to Duke Ellington, Jazz’s first great arranger. On The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Mingus employs an eleven-piece band to masterful effect. Mingus acts simultaneously as composer, arranger, director, producer, and bassist — yet every one of these roles is executed with brilliance and artistry.
The recording process was plagued by Mingus’ famously neurotic perfectionism, which led to liberal use of overdubbing. Nevertheless, the performances captured in these studio sessions are a revelation. The growling brass, cool drums, warm vamping piano, and other textures are a marriage of early Jazz technique and contemporary developments in the genre. The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is as much a Chamber music Ballet as it is a collection of Jazz tunes, taking elements of both in one of the finest examples of Jazz as America’s Classical Music.
Time / Life by Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra (2016, Impulse!)
A minimalist Big Band is as much an oxymoron as clean-burning coal and, coincidentally, Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra tackles both the paradox of an intimate Big Band Jazz ensemble and bullshit claims from climate-deniers about pollution, fossil fuels, and the like. Time / Life is a politically charged statement about our quickly warming planet and a eulogy to the group’s founder, who passed away before completing the arrangements heard on the record.
Rarely does the whole orchestra play together on Time / Life. But when they do, it’s magical. The lushness of the horns, clanging cymbals, plucked guitar and bass strings — it all stands in beautiful contrast to the rest of the record’s quiet dignity. The center track, Silent Spring, has a particularly satisfying crescendo near the end of the song. The instruments build to a collective wail, only to bow out without overstaying their welcome. The paradox of the minimal Big Band even extends to their loudest moments, which are short-lived and leave the listener eager for more to come.
Further Reading
To discover more Jazz music worth hearing, and to keep abreast of exciting new releases, check out these great sources of Jazz criticism:
Books
- Black Music
Amiri Baraka, 1968, Praeger - Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression
Richard Havers, 2014, Chronicle Books - Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times
Robin D.G. Kelley, 2012, Harvard University Press - Visions of Jazz: The First Century
Gary Giddins, 2000, Oxford University Press - A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
George Lewis, 2009, University of Chicago Press
