Arild Andersen/Paolo Vinaccia/Tommy Smith
Mira
ECM ***1/2
If there’s a figure on the Scottish jazz scene who knows about a state of independence in terms of musicianship, and jazz in particular, being his own person, leading from the front, looking to the outside rather than within yet without losing their own sense of identity along the way, then there really only is one person who leaps to mind, and that’s Tommy Smith. His distinguished track record in recent years as a bandleader and educator and in particular helming the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra is unequalled in Scotland. This latest record where the tenor saxophonist (also on the shakuhachi end blown Japanese flute on his own tune ‘Kangiten’) finds himself once more with the leader here bassist Arild Andersen, the Lillestrøm-born 68-year-old who appears on some of the most definitive and far reaching albums of European jazz of the last 50 years (particularly in the company of Jan Garbarek on Afric Pepperbird and Triptykon to name just two), and with Norwegian-based Italian drummer Paolo Vinaccia. Their album Live at Belleville released in 2008 was one of the best jazz records of that year, free flowing and quite spiritual in a way with a real energy to it. Mira is more contained, stately even to begin with on ‘Bygone’ that gorgeous bass tone of Andersen’s the pillar of the record, Smith simple and direct in the romantic melody with Vinaccia keeping the pace deliberately slow. Mira, recorded at Rainbow in Oslo in December 2012, might have fewer fireworks than Live at Belleville but there are small detonations and fascinating asides that surprise and detain prolonged interest in the repertoire, including even the slightly nostalgic but welcome choice of Burt Bacharach’s ‘Alfie’. Most of the other tunes are Andersen’s, often abstractions with a faraway quality hanging invisibly in the air, but there’s also Norwegian folk music folded in, the wash of the sea and sigh of the wind never far away.

Jeff Ballard trio
Time’s Tales
OKeh **** RECOMMENDED
Time’s Tales finds master drummer Ballard leading a supergroup in all but name, as he’s joined by the innovative Herbie Hancock guitarist Lionel Loueke, and the highly rhythmic Puerto Rico-born star alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón who has personality to burn here on complex joyous runs best glimpsed on Ballard’s tune ‘Beat Street’ or on the adaptation of Béla Bartók’s ‘44 Duos for Two Violins’ on ‘Dal, a Rhythm Song’ where Zenón is poignant and tender. An adventure with plenty of heat Time’s Tales is sure proof that metrical wizardry and subdivisions made in drummer heaven need not interfere with the vitality of the music as music. Indeed the sheer quality of the interplay means the technical feats melt away and you can actually reach the emotion of the playing which is partly the point after all so that the music speaks to you. The album opens with a great reminder of Obliqsound-period Loueke with ‘Virgin Forest’ the title track of an early album of the Benin-born guitarist's where his legend as a leader first began to surface. And there are other surprises: perhaps you wouldn’t expect the inclusion of ‘The Man I Love’ yet it fits in well as the album approaches its mid-point with Zenón all heart-on-sleeve on the classic Gershwin ballad. The energy of grown-up teenagers at heart letting off a bit of steam surfaces in the trio’s take on the Queens of the Stone Age’s ‘Hangin’ Tree’, a bit of fun, but much more rewarding is the experimental ‘Free 3’ at the end (hinted at earlier on the brief ‘Free 1’), which has real edge and above all openness. An album with more than its fair share of tenderness, Zenón is on fire pulling off some of the most direct playing of his career, and Loueke utilises the soukous and Franco-influenced side of his sound to magical effect painting vivid expressionistic brushstrokes all over this fine record Ballard has also produced. Go to sleep tonight and dream that your local club has the artistic sense as well as the wherewithal to book this gifted trio.

Black Top
# One with Special Guest Steve Williamson
Babel **** RECOMMENDED
First of all I’m not sure why CD buyers have to wait until mid-July for the release of Black Top’s debut available now as a download album. Surely the label should bring the physical release date way forward. I attended the concert captured on # One with Special Guest Steve Williamson recorded at the opening night concert of Jazz in the Round at the Cockpit theatre in London's Marylebone on 30 January 2012 and the album is a vivid souvenir of that excellent performance, the sound quality, even via a stream, strong and sure. Black Top was initiated in the latter part of 2011 by Jazz Warrior and multi-instrumentalist Orphy Robinson and pianist/sound sculptor Pat Thomas, and the group appears in different formations, with Steve Williamson guesting here (Williamson and Thomas had appeared as support to Steve Coleman’s Reflex a few months before at the London Jazz Festival). “Exploring the intersection between live instruments and lo-fi technology combining twisted loops, samples, dub-effects that draw on their Afro-Caribbean roots with the spirit of pure improvisation which is rooted in the free jazz experiments of NYC musicians like Sam Rivers,” according to the band. ‘There Goes the Neighbourhood’, with its Space Invaders-like bespoke keyboard sounds bubbling up from the Cecil Taylor-esque imagination of Thomas, brooding marimba density from Robinson and tender soprano saxophone lines from Williamson, who hasn’t been heard properly on record for years, is the 13 minute-plus opener; with the abstract hugely long ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner’ (a nod perhaps in its title to the 1950s Stanley Kramer film starring Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier) coming in like velvet via an a cappella Robinson beginning, Thomas later funnelling wild octave-trampling sheets of sound on what essentially is an extravagant ballad and the most startling achievement of this superb album. ‘Archaic Nubian StepDub’, the short closer, with Thomas’ zappy sci-fi keyboard lasering the opening before Williamson’s Gary Bartz-like tones give Robinson a feast for thought. That’s improvising.

George  Cables
Icons and Influences
HighNote ***1/2
Anyone in the know knows about George Cables. The former Jazz Messengers, Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon and Art Pepper sideman has a substantial discography as a leader as well dating back to the 1970s, a body of work that also includes much more recently Morning Song and
My Muse already for Joe Fields’ HighNote label. And Cables is also, these days, a crucial element in what for many is the supreme heritage hard bop band on the planet, The Cookers. The New Yorker turns 70 in 2014, and the pianist turns his attention on this his latest work, an album about sheer piano affinity and the pianist as above all a member of the band. It′s a solid trio affair with, joining him, bassist Dezron Douglas of The New Jazz Workshop and ex-Stan Getz drummer Victor Lewis, who returns from 2012′s My Muse, with tributes to two fallen jazz piano masters who passed away within the last year, Cedar Walton and Mulgrew Miller, in the opening tracks. Also included on Icons and Influences recorded in Brooklyn in September 2013 are absorbing takes on Brubeck’s ‘The Duke’ (Kevin Whitehead in the notes mentions the fact that Cables rehearsed singers for what became Ellington’s Second Sacred Concerts), Ellington’s ‘Come Sunday’, and Joe Henderson’s ‘Isotope’, plus a Lord Kitchener calypso among the dozen tracks. It’s wonderfully poised, Jamal-esque at times, measured and as sophisticated a piano trio album in the modern mainstream idiom that you’d go a long way to find. The left-hand piano rhythms have a swinging elasticity that’s infectious; and then there’s the melodic imagination at play when Cables lets the improvisation flow, not exactly rhapsodising, more a case of expressing his inner spirit. No one's reinventing the wheel here, part of the pleasure principle at work, yet Cables finds new things to say on the trio's gently tugging version of 'Nature Boy' where subtlety and elegance, watchwords on this album, reign supreme.

Catherine & Wind
New Folks
ACT ****
Making his debut for ACT Records guitarist Philip Catherine, 71, has been performing jazz at the highest level since he was a teenager, a playing partner of such luminaries as Dexter Gordon, Jean-Luc Ponty, and Chet Baker and his gypsy-jazz stylings and fluent modern mainstream technique have made him a connoisseurs’ choice, well, for ever. The link between the Belgian and German bassist Martin Wind, who has made a developing reputation in the States and who has featured on such different albums there as Bella Napoli and Sweet Shadow just recently, goes back to Wind having heard an album of Catherine’s from the 1980s, and Wind even dedicates New Folks to an old bass teacher who gave him his first Catherine album. After getting-to-know-you gigs on the bandstand in German jazz clubs last year the pair made New Folks over a few days in April 2013 and it’s now the latest in ACT’s excellent Duo Art series stocked here with tunes that with the odd exception you won’t hear too often as somehow they’re deemed old fashioned. However, for anyone with sensible ears, and a grown-up attitude to life and music, that shouldn’t pose too much of an obstacle. And on ‘Old Folks’ and Oscar Pettiford’s ‘Blues in the Closet’, just to pick a few spots, the pair shine. Catherine is at his most heartfelt on his own gorgeous Lars Danielsson-esque tune ‘L’Eternel Désir’ and overall New Folks is a swinging attractive sound that carries like far-off footfalls whose ever decreasing echoes you’ll want to linger.

Chaos Orchestra
Island Mentality
Chaos Collective ***
Laura Jurd has been cropping up a bit on records over the last year or two appearing as part of the Phil Meadows Group’s Engines of Creation where the trumpeter and a few other members of the Chaos Orchestra, including Elliot Galvin, and WorldService Project bassist Conor Chaplin, also feature. Meadows and Jurd had a clear rapport but Landing Ground from 2012 is really the place to pick up on Jurd’s work if you’re not familiar with her so far, an album recorded when the trumpeter was just 21. Island Mentality is more ambitious with a 20+-ensemble to lead and it’s notable most obviously for the striking contributions by singer Lauren Kinsella from the band Thought-Fox who debuted with My Guess  in 2013. The Irish singer has an adventurous scaled-up spirit, Norma Winstone-like in certain respects as she draws on Jurd’s setting of John Donne’s 17th century meditative poem, the opener, and even more so on the more experimental ‘Horses for Courses.’ Recorded last July the orchestra works around the concept of a loose British theme complete with a cartoon of a map on the cover peopled with tea towel-like caricatures of regional identifiers, a slightly cheesy proposition. But there’s a youthfulness in the music that makes up for this slightly twee device, mostly written by Jurd who also conducts the orchestra and solos on ‘Strange Attractors’ written by her co-producer Mark Lockheart. There are tunes too by saxophonist Simon Marsh and by guitarist Alex Roth who feature in the orchestra. Stuffed with energetic rumblings and enthusiastic detours touching on jazz-rock and even Township flavours Island Mentality has plenty of ideas swimming around in the Chaos Orchestra's very own Gulf stream even if the album could do with a little bit more of a freak wave here and there. Jurd, nevertheless, is making steady progress as an emerging composer and arranger with a bright future ahead and in a year when Loose Tubes are reforming the timing couldn’t be better.

Avishai Cohen
Almah
Parlophone ****
Named after the bassist’s young daughter Almah follows on from 2012’s Duende, which saw the Israeli jazz star perform as a duo with pianist Nitai Hershkovits who also features as part of the core jazz trio here now joined by the excellent young drummer Ofri Nehemya, a string section, and the oboe/cor anglais of Yoram Lachish. It’s Avishai “with strings” in essence the strings sounding that bit different with the inclusion of two violas rather than one adding a darker hue to the voicings. The compositions are mostly Cohen’s, and not all of these are new as there is some recycling of older material including ‘Hayo Hayta’, which appeared on Cohen's 2011 Blue Note album Seven Seas. Of the non-originals a tender treatment of Thad Jones ‘A Child is Born’, the longest track on the album, a waltz-time ballad recorded by the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in the 70s that Cohen has also recorded before (on his International Vamp Band album Unity). Cohen’s extraordinary metrical facility is heard best on ‘Shlosre’, again a link to the joyful abandon of Seven Seas. The tracks are mostly quite short and often draw on folk songs from the Sephardic tradition in one main strand, and as a whole Almah builds on the explorations Cohen first set out to document while recording his album Aurora at the end of 2008. More satisfying than that early attempt somehow, the influence of classical music particularly the influence of the Romantic tradition especially when Hershkovits stretches out adds new interest within some of this scheme of thought in the writing. Cohen is a remarkable live performer and this studio album easily captures that sense of occasion his concerts always invoke. It’s also his most mature album, and the way the bassist is able to fuse folk music and the classic jazz post-bop tradition while retaining the improvisational impulse that underpins everything after all has never been more clearly expressed.

Nir Felder
Golden Age
OKeh ****
What the point of the speeches, fairly random spoken word extracts from a range of significant public figures inserted as a backdrop to tracks such as ‘Sketch 2’ on guitarist Felder’s major label debut amounts to, is anyone’s guess. There’s no obvious political point to be made at least to begin with apart from the fact that these are, yes, stating the obvious, speeches by political figures. So beyond backdrop they serve as examples of public discourse swirling around, inchoate if serious voices off, although structurally they’re useful in the compositional flow. That level of distraction suits this record and maybe the point is that Felder places himself in some sort of recent historical era in American society, and the image on the album cover with an image of an urban scene photoshopped into his frame then places him physically in the world.Is this ‘golden age’ a reality, Felder seems to be asking, ultimately deciding that instead the American dream has ended. It's a very different approach to the idea, in a jazz context, to that of say John Abercrombie on his recent album 39 Steps. Where the musical conversation begins is where James Farm left off, that fine very different quartet formed in 2009 featuring Joshua Redman where half the band here bassist Matt Penman and pianist Aaron Parks came of age. But Felder has his own very special sound, quite remarkable for someone who’s relatively new on the international scene, completing the quartet with drummer Nate Smith who's known for his work with Chris Potter. After the speeches mostly recede although they do come back initially in the spirit of hope at the end in the ‘hidden track’ after some 30 seconds of silence with what sounds like among others the voice of Hillary Clinton on ‘Before the Tsars’ the true atmosphere of the record really embeds itself in. Characterised largely by lots of slow loose Stratocaster rockisms, anthemic chords that settle and inure themselves, some very subtle voicings (Parks accompanies with a magic touch and breaks free now and then), Felder only occasionally dwelling on formative influences (John Scofield a bit) he’s closer to a player nearer his age such as the Dane Jakob Bro. On ‘Memorial’ the careful unpacking of improvising lines truly begins with Smith bustling in and Felder opening up the plot of the record. Yet ‘Bandits II’ is the big tune, a little Frisellian, New Melodic, with appeal beyond jazz, it’s just a great piece of instrumental music, the kind of hooky tune that comes along once in while. And there is a plot throughout, odd little episodes, not even poignant but like something out of an Alexander Payne film that connects universally to shed that bit of necessary light on the human condition and within that the state of jazz.

GoGo Penguin
v2.0
Gondwana **** RECOMMENDED
Opening  gently with the heartbeat of ‘Murmuration’, drummer Rob Turner languidly nudging the band forward, pianist Chris Illingworth enveloping the listener in a cocoon of euphony, new bassist Nick Blacka’s processed double bass eventually rising to the sense of occasion, a dystopian dissonance ultimately against the arc of a soaring crescendo. Then ‘Garden Dog Barbecue’ provides more detail, and in keeping with their earlier Gondwana album Fanfares (Blacka replacing charismatic bassist Grant Russell) the EST comparison is unavoidable but it’s fast making less sense certainly in the totality of this deeply satisfying still unreleased new album. Turner’s drum patterns are certainly very different to Magnus Öström’s, merging more with a broken beat sensibility, and the motion doesn’t just track to trip hop and back. The band’s collective musical empathy is stronger already here than on Fanfares, which nonetheless was a fine debut. There’s a certain melancholia in the band’s sound retained that is still appealing, and a certain enhanced karmic side to their interplay where you can measure the emotional impact at certain points. ‘Fort’ simplifies and clarifies the sound while protest song ‘One Percent’ has an eerie beginning that smashes hard, and ‘Home’ introduces new timbres, the drums more metallic. It’s a tuneful album, Halifax-born Illingworth a versatile and subtle kind of virtuoso who knows how to harness the energy and lost-in-the-music abandon of a 1990s dance music generation evident in the band’s interior soundtrack with Aphex Twin and Massive Attack influences peeking through. ‘The Letter’ was recorded in the dark apparently, a technique also deployed by another New Melodic band Phronesis, yet GoGo Penguin rely less on the delayed gratification of metrical exploration than the Anglo-Scandinavian trio whose latest album Life to Everything hits three weeks after v2.0. ‘To Drown in You’ has lots of surprise detonations, jabbing drums, and rhapsodic effects, with ‘Shock and Awe’ and ‘Hopopono’ drawing an album that could easily stake its claim as the most original and accessible jazz piano trio album of new music to emerge from these shores since the Neil Cowley 2006 album Displaced, to a convincing close.

Tord Gustavsen Quartet
Extended Circle
ECM **** RECOMMENDED
Book-ended by hypnotic trio pieces joining pianist Gustavsen once more is the line-up from The Well: tenor saxophonist Tore Brunborg, bassist Mats Eilertsen, and drummer Jarle Vespestad. Opener ‘Right There’ takes you back to the atmosphere of The Ground when the late Harald Johnsen was in the band and the trio’s finest hour. That spooky super-emotive spiritual sound that only Gustavsen can produce hits you smack in the face; it’s all in the timing and Gustavsen’s manipulation of silence for dramatic effect is immediate. The Norwegian hymn ‘Eg Veit I Himmerik Ei Borg’ (‘I Know A Castle In Heaven’) might not quite have the drama of the opening piece, which is actually more hymn-like paradoxically, yet drummer Vespestad makes his presence felt here brilliantly, and Brunborg’s magisterial offerings resemble a stage actor limbering up for a crucial soliloquy. Brunborg is magnificent throughout, less Garbarek than on The Well more his own person while the suite-like ‘Entrance’ shows how the band can operate in a hugely stripped down setting, all difficult pauses and notes freighted with cool emotion while ‘The Gift’ allows Gustavsen to rhapsodise beautifully again, a veritable horse whisperer coaxing the humanity out of the perspiring body of the quartet. ‘Staying There’ opens out for Mats Eilertsen to sit behind Brunborg as the pulse of the quartet settles and Gustavsen channels the gospelly end of (unavoidably) Keith Jarrett’s approach. You might need some patience with ‘Silent Spaces’ although the process rewards very close listening, the softer the four play the more magical the effect. The folk-like fragmentary opening of ‘Entrance, var.’ is more of a surprise given what’s gone before; but ‘Devotion’ (an adaption of a piece from a commissioned work for the Nidaros Cathedral Choir) goes deeper still into the spiritual domain with a wonderfully poised Brunborg opening deep and slow Gustavsen tracking him relentlessly, never missing a pause or interfering with the character in Brunborg’s softly unfolding melodic progression. ‘The Embrace’ somehow manages to inject a naïve joy into the album at this late stage and that lightness of mood is needed. But ‘Bass Transition’ perhaps less essential; the invigorating ‘Glow’; and finally, magically, ‘The Prodigal Song’ then complete an album that the pianist sees as the last part of a “double circle” of trilogies and that has an inescapable grandeur to it.

Joel Harrison and Anupam Shobhakar Multiplicity
Leave the Door Open
Whirlwind Recordings ***1/2
The career of Joel Harrison has often proved an exasperating one to follow, the American guitarist as capable of exploring the music of Paul Motian on the one hand as he is the music of the Beatle George Harrison on the other, and as happy in Americana-type situations as he is to be found in more recognisably contemporary jazz ones. On this latest work the guitarist has decided to investigate North Indian music in the company of “non-western ally” sarodist Anupam Shobhakar, framing it within jazz and American folk stylings in the company of a band bristling with talent including pianist Gary Versace, prolific expatriate Austrian bassist Hans Glawischnig, drummer/tabla player Dan Weiss plus guests notably alto saxophonist David Binney and Indian vocalists. The album takes its time to reveal itself. Yet even so Harrison and Shobhakar blend more than well, and they produce a nuanced meshing of ancient and modern musical styles that include the inclusion of traditional Bengali music and an African-American spiritual harnessing incendiary improvisational resources to spectacular effect at certain points especially when David Binney breaks clear. I liked the version of Willie Dixon’s ‘Spoonful’ best, a song held dear in the 1960s and since by fans of Cream. Here the song is rootsy and elaborately laid back, and Leave the Door Open works best when it’s at its most relaxed and able to steer away from the overly technical.

Arve Henriksen
Cosmic Creation
Rune Grammofon (2-CDs)  *** 1/2
Belonging partly to 2012’s Solidification retrospective of the innovative Norwegian trumpeter’s, as ‘Chron’ one of the two CDs here featured in that endeavour containing as it does sounds recorded at home and in places such as hotels and even backstage at gigs. On the second disc giving the set its overall title the 8-part ‘Cosmic Creation’ ominously rumbling as it gets underway is new having been recorded in a Swedish studio. ‘Chron’ has a light industrial feel at the beginning, all conyeyer belt-like noises and odd factory-of-the-future sounds yet by ‘Solidification’ the fourth track with its engine running in the background shimmeringly and briefly installed Milesian atmosphere it’s ambivalently redolent of jazz for a tiny section before moving to the out-and-out throbbing ambient soundscape of ‘Magma Oscillator’ late in.Henriksen is almost a genre all by himself you can’t help but feeling after experiencing both parts of Cosmic Creation a few times and this is a feat of composition and considered assemblage as much as sheer performance. But just check out what he does on the staggering fourth track of ‘Cosmic Creation’ where the mists clear and everything makes sense, at least for a while. So, all in all some extraordinary often unsettling but involving soundscapes, and further proof should any be required of how far-sighted musically Henriksen remains.

Mimi Jones
Balance
Hot Tone Music ***
The first thing you might want to do when the bass solo kicks in right from the off on Balance is to listen to Miles Davis’ album Sorcerer. It’s unavoidable. That’s because New York bassist Mimi Jones (known for her work with saxophonist Tia Fuller) opens with ‘Nothing Like You’, the Bob Dorough song that Dorough sang Fran Landesman's words to with the Miles Davis sextet in 1962 and which ended up included on Sorcerer five years later, a rare appearance by a vocalist on a Miles album. It’s great historic jazz signposting. That done turn back to Balance an album where Jones who debuted with A New Day five years ago also sings on some tracks as well as alternating between electric and woody acoustic bass and is joined by a cast of players including trumpeter Ingrid Jensen plangent and lonely on ‘The Edge of a Circle’, erstwhile Ravi Coltrane pianist Luis Perdomo on five tracks (Miki Hayama on keys on much of the remainder) and such luminaries as Marvin Sewell cropping up. Sewell unusually also adds piano on the treatment of his own tune ‘The Spinning Tree’; and then there's legendary pianist Mal Waldron’s daughter Mala a guest vocalist at the end on the positive ‘Dream’. Drum duties are shared between Branford Marsalis drummer Justin Faulkner and Shirazette Tinnin.

Balance is a lively spirited album even it's a mixed bag (the soupy ‘To Be’ one of the weaker tracks) full of broad brushstrokes and energy, a bit rough around the edges in places, but that doesn’t really matter too much and the album keeps it real with an ear for familiar material including perennial favourite Roy Ayers’ ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine’ that unfolds stealthily and a quirky if less essential choice in children’s song ‘The Incy Wincy Spider.’ Including Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’, a contrast to the Dorough song in its link to the modern day popular music world whereas the Dorough song denoted aspects of the Beat-inspired jazz-vocals past, is a risk as the song has been covered so much. Yet Jones just about pulls off its inclusion in the eight-minute version here.
 
Eleni Karaindrou
Medea
ECM ***
Last year’s release of Concert in Athens featured music recorded in 2010 a year before this new album was made where here instead there's music written for a stage production of the Euripides tragedy, later performed a month on from recording at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus. The two records couldn’t be more different and instead of Jan Garbarek’s saxophone as a main instrument in an album full of melodramatic themes as was the case on Concert in Athens, it’s the Constantinople lute, lyra, and ney that feature here as the prevailing lead of the music for the tragic events enacted in the play, the first two instruments played by Socratis Sinopoulos, the ney by Haris Lambrakis with clarinets, cello, santour, bendir and voice (including Karaindrou’s own in a few places) the remaining parts. I expected the music to be extremely grim to match the tragic tale of madness and infanticide but that’s not quite the case as Karaindrou’s humanising voicings and matter-of-factness while not exactly lifting the mood, which would be ridiculous, summon a compelling almost liturgical atmosphere freighted with unease. It’s impossible without witnessing the music in its stage version to appreciate fully the meshing of music and drama. But on their own the 17 short tracks develop moods and tension often darkly elegiac and involving, the cello part on ‘On The Way To Exile’ one such place, or intense as the strings and reeds textures of ‘A Sinister Decision’ draw you in giving way ultimately to the lament-laden voices of the female chorus. That's where the real impact of the album rises powerfully.

Booker Little Quartet Quintet Sextet
Complete Recordings Master Takes
American Jazz Classics ***1/2
Don’t worry too much about the “master takes” bit in the title as this 2-CD set is simply a reissued collection of four albums by the trumpeter who died ridiculously young (just 23) in October 1961. His work though casts a giant shadow. The albums here Booker Little 4 and Max Roach (United Artists, recorded in 1958), Booker Little (Time, 1960), Out Front (Candid, 1961), and Booker Little and Friend (Bethlehem, 1961) would definitely benefit from remastering (especially needed on the Booker Little and Friend tracks) or a better sound source although the audio quality of the first CD is OK. Little, extraordinarily given his subsequent influence only recorded between 1958 and 1961, the year of his death, working within that short run of years extensively with Max Roach on Roach’s own albums (he is on the classic We Insist!) with Dolphy on Far Cry and a little with John Coltrane (on Africa/Brass recorded just four months before Little’s untimely death). The drummers here on these albums are key: Roach of course; and there's Roy Haynes (Booker Little), and Pete La Roca who died in 2012 on Booker Little and Friend, with bass duties carried out by Art Davis, Ron Carter to a lesser extent, Scott LaFaro, and Reggie Workman. Pianists involved are Tommy Flanagan (who featured on Giant Steps recorded just seven months after Booker Little 4 and Max Roach), Don Friedman, and Wynton Kelly a bit, while sharing the front line with Little are, in different situations saxophonist George Coleman sometimes with trombonist Julian Priester, or Eric Dolphy and Priester combining with Little (Dolphy almost steals the show entirely with his coruscating solo on ‘We Speak’). While the rhythm sections are quite superb even if the sound is murky in places the arrangement of horns is the most immediate factor, as well as the sheer unclichéd beauty of Little’s soloing. One of the best examples of this is with Roach on Little’s own beautifully arranged modernistic ballad ‘Strength and Sanity’. Twenty-one of the 26 tracks are Little’s own compositions, a substantial body of work by anyone’s reckoning. I’m not that keen on the way AJC have presented the music here (the booklet is too text heavy and scrapbook-like) but that quibble aside the music speaks for itself: of its time, yet ahead of the game.

Robin McKelle & the Flytones
Heart of Memphis
OKeh ***1/2
Appearing soon with Pee Wee Ellis and Fred Wesley at Ronnie Scott’s, singer Robin McKelle pays homage to Memphis here, and its Stax and Hi Records heritage, with her own distinctive bluesy approach mixing in soul and R&B generously enough. With a very commercial sound Heart of Memphis has a slick band with plenty of great Farfisa organ and pulsing electric bass rich in the mix and it’s soulful and full of well crafted material, mostly McKelle’s own songs, detaining you along the way and a lively hip swinging feel to a tune such as ‘Good Time’ with a cover of ‘Please Don’t Let Me Be So Misunderstood’ only suffering because it’s so familiar. McKelle sells the songs well and the New York state-born singer leans not at all to jazz even though her jazz chops were strong enough to place in the Thelonious Monk vocals competition a decade ago. Best tracks? Well there’s plenty of interest on a song such as ‘Control Yourself’ that wouldn’t be out of place on a Lisa Stansfield album even though McKelle’s powerful voice and sound owe much more to Janis Joplin and Tina Turner. The country flavours of the Obie Burnett McClinton song ‘Forgetting You’ are a bit distracting but head instead to the title track, and also to ‘Like a River’ where the band begin to stretch out and McKelle sounds at her most convincing.

Modern Jazz Quartet
October 28 1957 NDR Studio Hannover
Moosicus ****
“Mister John, your announcement,” says the heavily accented voice in English at the beginning, and then it’s the voice of none other than pianist John Lewis. “We would like to play a composition entitled Vendôme,”  he says, simply. And it’s like being there. The sound is so immediate and the work-in-progress feel of the release like stepping in to some phone box of a time machine. The latest from a vault containing 60 years of jazz recorded by German broadcaster NDR following releases in the autumn by Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, and Stéphane Grappelli the “jazz fugue” opening, the four swinging like the clappers recorded here in the studio following an earlier concert in Hannover at the Beethoven Hall. Handsomely-liveried, decked out like the previous releases with clever cover typography and sharing the same honest sound accompanied here by interesting notes by that fine jazz magazine writer Martin Laurentius handily translated into English complementing the strong artwork and period photos, it’s worth stopping to realise that these days most jazz reissues aren’t properly presented if they even exist at all (given certain rights holder indifference and a general fascination with crap downloads). So that’s one of the reasons why you need this. Artistry + quality sound + graphics + notes = a result. The sound is fat and succulent and rid yourselves of the notion of a dull chamber jazz vibe. There's plenty of that elsewhere even in jazz today! Tracks include Lewis’ music for Vadim’s Sait-on Jamais (aka No Sun In Venice) and Milt Jackson’s ‘Bluesology’ but It’s ‘All the Things You Are’ “one of the first pieces in our repertoire”, Lewis says, goofing the words of his intro, laughing, to do it again. Forget the words but soak up the music: Jackson exuberant, Lewis’ comping just beautiful; trotting bass from Percy Heath; and Connie Kay, the master, at the kit. Four/fore-sight from all concerned.

Pat Metheny Unity Group
Kin (←→)
Nonesuch ****
Extending the Unity Band can’t have been easy. The addition of Italian-born multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi, a new star nothing if not versatile, credited as playing 11 instruments as well as adding vocals and, um, whistling, has gradually nudged Metheny into the completion of a saxophone-flavoured group that seems larger than it is. And it’s much different to the much missed Pat Metheny Group last heard on 2005’s The Way Up. Whether this “Unity Band plus-1” (very unPMG-like in nearly every respect although long-time PMG bassist Steve Rodby is associate producer as he was on 2012’s Unity Band ) will get even bigger in the future is anyone’s guess. But with as restless an innovator as Metheny anything is possible and you can see much more clearly with this record that there is huge possibility for the Unity Group to grow into a Unity Orchestra, a fascinating thought.

In release terms 2013 saw Metheny embrace the avant garde once more, his most successful attempt in that regard to date following on from fulfilling explorations in the Ornette Coleman and Derek Bailey sound universe. But last year also let his long term followers pick up the Orchestrion story once again even if that was a case of completing a story that had already unfolded.

The nine tracks here, by stylistic and conceptual contrast, recorded in June 2013 in a New York studio, features exclusively Metheny’s music, the style whether balladic or anthemic as familiar as the face of your very best friend even when the tunes happen to be brand new. ‘Born’ beginning with acoustic guitar and then becoming achingly bluesy is the big tune, as good as anything Metheny has ever written at such a slow tempo, so for this alone Kin (←→) is essential, but hear it in the context of the album at least the first time around. And Potter interprets the melody with so much tenderness that it almost hurts. The presence of saxophone made all the difference when the Unity Band first emerged, and Chris Potter’s role is as important here as it was then and yet there's so much more with for instance Ben Williams’ bass figures on a song such as ‘We Go On’ drawing you in mercilessly.

There are subtle and welcome shifts in Metheny’s writing for the Unity Group, the guitarist’s use of his innovative orchestrionics less pronounced and Carmassi fills a lot of gaps, weaving dreams of Metheny's left unrealised in the earlier instrumental palette. Kin (←→) has some very complex sinewy textures and a great deal of advanced production work (the sound is handsomely real nonethelessss), and is an absorbing listen. Fans may think to divide along Unity Band/Group lines, but it’s clear that this is a deepening of Metheny’s new approach to small group jazz rather than encroaching on anything already laid down in stone; and it's also an attempt to break out from constricting structures that seem to affect acoustic jazz more egregiously than fusion. For that alone and in a year when the great Missourian turns 60 Metheny should gain maximum respect.

Mraz and Viklický
Together Again
ACT ***1/2
The distinguished bassist George Mraz, who is 70 this year and whose recent work has included the release of a duo album with British pianist Zoe Rahman, is here in another duo context this time with his fellow countryman and junior of four years pianist Emil Viklický. They of course have appeared together before, as you can tell from the album title, combining on Moravian Gems with singer/violinist Iva Bittova and drummer Laco Tropp in an exploration of Moravian modal folk music following earlier album Morava when the piano/bass pairing welcomed drummer Billy Hart and vocalist/cimbalom player Zuzana Lapcíková.

Appearing here just as a duo Mraz and Viklický reprise some of their earlier repertoire as an element of these 11 tracks as well as two pieces by Janáček, chief of which is an interpretation of the theme from the andante con moto section of the great Czech composer's 1926 ‘Sinfonietta’, Viklický all music box-like at first taking up the theme the flutes play in the orchestral arrangement before the pianist’s arrangement opens out for an improvisation.

Recorded in Munich in January 2013 Together Again is a slightly unusual often stately-paced and gentle album delivered with a maximum amount of love and affection serving as both a highly tasteful homage to the pair’s homeland and its musical heritage and to their combined love of jazz expressed in terms close to both of their hearts.

Jeremy Pelt
Face Forward, Jeremy
HighNote ***1/2
Trumpeter Pelt’s quintet with JD Allen on tenor saxophone, Danny Grissett on piano, the late Dwayne Burno on bass, and Gerald Cleaver on drums was a formidable unit. And while comparisons are invidious Pelt set the bar so high with that unit that it takes a deep breath (and yes some mourning) and adjustment to come to terms with his still fairly new set-up.
It’s the sign of a true artist who moves on so that needs to be said first of all. Recorded in September in Brooklyn Pelt has injected air and space into this “electric” band, David Bryant on Fender Rhodes in places one of the significant factors, with Chris Smith on tasty Marcus Miller-like electric bass. The album takes its time to unfold and it’s only by the end of ‘Stars Are Free’ Bryant’s stabbing chords, Smith’s probing bass solo and an intriguing invisible momentum ratcheting up that there’s a clearing. Water and Earth was the new quintet’s first tentative steps and there’s development here, fine tunes tumbling out particularly in the very hip 1960s vintage Blue Note-esque ‘Glimpse’, as well as loads of floaty echo elsewhere part of Pelt’s recalibrated sound to suit the idiom on the slower numbers and a veritable thunder from drummer Dana Hawkins, a worthy successor to Gerald Cleaver. Pelt is only 37 but already a heavyweight figure of considerable artistry on the competitive hard bop scene coming out of the Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan sound dimension. Newcomer Roxy Coss is a name to watch and the New York scene Seattle saxophonist makes a range of velvety interjections that adds to the quintet’s distinctive crush of harmonies (and contributes the tune ‘The Calm Before the Storm’), the guest vocals, harp and cello on a few tracks also adding to the chamber lushness of the sound in the right places. Give Face Forward, Jeremy a chance, that is if you’re looking for a high octane blast from the start as you won’t find it here. You might not get it at first, but by the time ‘Princess Charlie’ fades out and the album settles the fascinating new pluralistic direction unveils itself warts and all. Milton Suggs’ guest vocal at the end on 'Verse' is also quite a moment even if it's a case of blink and you’ll be in danger of missing the next Gregory Porter.

Robin Phillips
Sing. Play… for Pleasure
Rep Music ***1/2
A labour of love, Cambridgeshire-based singer Robin Phillips has investigated the art of vocalese extensively for Sing. Play… for Pleasure. He takes up the cause of King Pleasure who famously championed vocalese to a hitherto unsuspecting but impressed public in the early-1960s, and who would go on to influence Georgie Fame whose vocalese lyrics combined with King Pleasure’s Phillips interprets here, and who also gave ideas in the more jazz-crucial side of his musical personality to Van Morrison particularly on Morrison's 1996 Verve album How Long Has This Been Going On?

Included here are Phillips’ own vocalese to Jon Hendricks’s solo on ‘No More Blues’ and his own slightly too smooth take on Chet Baker’s solo on ‘Let’s Get Lost’ from 1955 Pacific jazz album Chet Baker Sings and Plays plus more by Eddie Jefferson and of course King Pleasure among the selections. Guests include Ian Shaw effortlessly exuberant on ‘Doodlin’’ and Anita Wardell flying high on the fiendishly fast ‘Jackie’ on which Annie Ross wrote vocalese for based on a Wardell Gray solo. Phillips, who also plays piano cabaret-style accompaniment, can be a bit cautious and overly safe at times and you feel he could take more of a liberty with the material to inject a bit more of that syncopated swagger at key points. But stick with him and the album gets better as it goes along. He’s backed by bassist Tim Thornton (fast becoming the Dave Green of his generation) and drummer Chris Draper and highlights here I would have thought include the previously mentioned duet with Anita Wardell where Phillips seems to lose some of his inhibitions and where the gutsy tenor sax solo from London-based Texan Albert Garza adds a certain energy to the speakeasy atmosphere of the track. There’s a great touch at the end in Phillips’ idea to set his own very English-sounding speaking voice to 1972 Jon Hendricks liner notes for King Pleasure double album reissue The Source with bass and drums added to his own piano lines vamping behind.

Roswell Rudd
Trombone for Lovers
Sunnyside ***1/2
An audaciously titled record (!), the band of avant garde trombonist Roswell Rudd, now 78, whose playing over the years has decorated such landmark recordings as Archie Shepp’s Mama Too Tight and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra sets up a ‘Comin’ Home Baby’-like groove on opener ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’. And uncannily on the very next track the co-writer of ‘Baby’, Bob Dorough, pops up, growlingly, as if by magic on Lennon and McCartney's ‘Here, There and Everywhere’. With songs drawn from Rudd’s recollections of childhood (“at this time in my life I worship at the altar of melody”, he wrote during the album’s Kickstarter campaign) when he would sing the songs in school or in church here seen as “standards in American song” Rudd is in a core quartet with John Medeski on B3, bassist Richard Hammond and drummer Aaron Comess, with lots of guests including Gary Lucas, Fay Victor, and Sexmob’s Steven Bernstein on a fun set of tunes. As you’d expect with Medeski on the organ it’s a highly infectious groove (carefully weighted on ‘Green Onions’) and while there is something of a raggedy jamming feel throughout, that doesn’t detract; in fact it's a bonus. The album is not without its great moments, Fay Victor capable of stopping the traffic dead in its tracks on ‘Trouble in Mind’ a performance that simply soars away; Rudd raw and emotional on ‘Unchained Melody’; and showing his soloing imagination on ‘The Relentless Walk’ section of ‘Joe Hill’ segueing into Reggie Bennett’s conscious rap. 

Catherine Russell
Bring it Back
Jazz Village ****
The time may well be right for another old time record, given the alchemy achieved last year by Cécile McLorin Salvant and to an extent René Marie although both were actually very modern records as well in certain ways. Bring it Back is more orthodox old time if you like in a kind of gospel-and-swing-dipping-into-Dixie sense and follows on from Russell’s 2012 outing Strictly Romancin’. The daughter of famed bandleader Luis Russell, who arranged for Louis Armstrong in the 1930s and 1940s (and whose unknown but stimulating song for Armstrong, ‘Lucille’, makes its playfully perky swinging debut here), and the late Carline Ray, a guitarist in the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Russell has a quality voice as soft and sweet as molasses, girl-like on ‘I’m Shooting High’, much gutsier and effortlessly powerful on ‘You’ve Got To Swing and Sway’. She’s backed by a lively band with clarinettist Dan Block providing some Dixie touches at certain points while Mark Shane’s achingly slow piano accompaniment on Johnny Otis’ ‘Aged and Mellow’ allows Russell to make this song about preferring older men (‘I like my men like I like my whiskey/Aged and mellow’) creep along atmospherically even if it’s a much less earthy version of the song than Little Esther’s 1952 rendition. And while Russell comes into her own on the highly rhythmic take of ‘The Darktown Strutter's Ball’ where drummer Mark McLean shines, it’s the earthier side of Russell’s voice that’s crying out to burst through although that starts to emerge on ‘I’m Sticking With You Baby’ (a song co-written by Rudy Toombs who also penned ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’). Bring it Back has some really well captured tenor saxophone breaks from Andy Farber including one on ‘Lucillle’ that sound like the music of a lost era come alive and highlights include Russell’s very smooth take on Fats Waller and Andy Razaf’s ‘Strange as it Seems.’

Jacques Schwarz-Bart
Jazz Racine Haïti
Motéma ****
Saxophonist Schwarz-Bart has arranged traditional Haïtian voodoo music on Jazz Racine Haïti having immersed himself in the music on trips to Haïti and added some new work of his own to include on the album. With voodoo priests, a singer and percussionist, on board, and arrangements that allow room for a strong vocal flavour the album was recorded in France and in New York towards the end of 2012. The idea behind the project is partly to show voodoo more as a music of religious ritual with a strong cultural outlook rather than something akin to exaggerated notions of black magic. Of the ten tracks there is traditional ceremonial music as well as sacred chants drawn on by Schwarz-Bart in his own compositions and several tracks that step more into more recognisably mainstream jazz flavours. It’s beautifully recorded with a real shimmer of a sound and there are warm, vibrant episodes to savour, for instance on the fourth track ‘Bade Zile’ where the emotive vocals of Rozna Zile cut the air. Sometimes it’s the vocalists who actually seize the momentum, Stephanie McKay’s feature on ‘Kontredans’ for instance one of these places. Schwarz-Bart’s saxophone tone is a real pleasure to listen to, while the Unity Group’s Ben Williams on bass and drummer Obed Calvaire (who also features on the upcoming Helen Sung record Anthem For a New Day) are a fine rhythm combo teaming with pianist Milan Milanovic on most of the tracks. Trumpeter Etienne Charles in combination with Schwarz-Bart also draws out the nuances of a pretty ballad such as ‘Night’ to great effect, just one further striking element of an imaginative project.

Scottish National Jazz Orchestra
American Adventure
Spartacus Records ****
There’s a confidence and a swagger about the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s performance here that hits you from the off, on one of their starriest albums to date following not long on from their Ellington-themed last album. The exuberance of jazz-rock icon Mike Stern wailing beautifully against the swelling ensemble sound on Marcus Miller’s ‘Splatch’ at the beginning doesn’t hurt at all. And neither too does the sheer excitement of this whole enterprise for the orchestra holed up at Avatar in New York for a couple of days during their first north American tour last year, a buzz factor that clearly rubbed off in terms of performance. There’s plenty of composure as well in this set of well-chosen modern jazz repertory material featuring the inclusion of arrangements from a number of hands of music including pieces by John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, and Chick Corea, and there’s also a remarkable artistic breadth bearing in mind that the orchestra is equally at home performing very different ECM-related material. Kurt Elling’s poised and velvety tones added to the fine Tommy Smith arrangement of ‘Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love’ is an immediate talking point on this excellent record. Other guests, including Joe Locke, flying on Wayne Shorter’s ‘Yes or No’, trumpeter Randy Brecker, saxophonist Dave Liebman, and drummer Clarence Penn, don’t distract at all with their star power. An American adventure that works on every level.   

Christoph Stiefel Inner Language trio
Big Ship
Basho Records ****
You’re in safe hands from the start on Big Ship. Recorded in the German city of Osnabrück last summer, surely not one of the most glamorous settings to record an album, the 52-year-old Zurich-born pianist’s newly configured Inner Language Trio steps up the mark on this collection of 11 tunes. Stiefel’s piano style may be more grounded in the music of Bill Evans but like both Gwilym Simcock and Martin Tingvall, to a lesser extent, it’s all tempered with sublimated intimations of classical music deep down in the cavernous hold of this particular maritime vessel where hints of Ravel and more spill out of the tightly packed cargo. But Big Ship isn’t just about a fine piano player: it’s about the trio as a unit and they all click, bassist Arne Huber and drummer Kevin Chesham as super-subtle and wise as Dan Berglund and Magnus Öström were in EST. The most startling European jazz trio I’ve come across since first hearing Tingvall trio it’s a delicious album of Stiefel’s own compositions, wrought with their own wistful energy and imaginative bittersweet resolutions. The narrative arc the trio so instinctively assembles spins out, even in ‘First Blossom’ the briefest of the compositions, and draws you in like a moth to the flame as the ship sails blithely on.

Helen Sung
Anthem for a New Day
Concord Records ***1/2
Well-known for her appearances as a member of the Mingus big band, pianist Helen Sung’s own albums as a leader track back to Push released a decade ago. Opening with her own tune ‘Brother Thelonious’ there’s a certain spring in the Houston-born player’s step from the off with some lively bass from Reuben Rogers, Charles Lloyd’s long time bassist; and a certain momentum from drummer Obed Calvaire, who was in Monty Alexander’s band when he (like Sung with the Mingus band) did club dates in London last year. With firm highlights including Chick Corea’s ‘Armando’s Rhumba’, which has plenty of life to it and comes with a quite superb Paquito D’Rivera clarinet solo, Sung’s switch to Fender Rhodes on the next track in isn’t too jarring, the guest spot from violinist Regina Carter on this track, ‘Hidden’, and then trumpet (Ingrid Jensen) joining, a refreshing direction for the album to embark on. Sung’s preferred style here is at the hip end of modern mainstream with a strong and warm supper club sound enhanced by some percussion flavours in the sextet from Samuel Torres. Rogers handles the slowing down of the album well on ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing’) without it becoming too old hat and Sung backs Seamus Blake’s emotive soprano saxophone solo on her own tune ‘Hope Springs Eternally’ with excellent composure. The title track with added bass clarinet from John Ellis has lots of imaginative twists and turns with Sung again switching to spacey Fender Rhodes and Blake eventually pushing the jazz-rock lever hard, Jensen champing at the bit in her runaway trumpet lines as Calvaire turns up the heat. The slightly brittle arrangement of the Livingston/Evans song ‘Never Let Me Go’, introduced in the 1956 film noir The Scarlet Hour, doesn’t quite gel, and maybe the frantic bluster of ‘Chaos Theory’ muddies the waters a little bit too much. But Anthem for a New Day moves to a strong close rounded off by Monk’s ‘Epistrophy’ and, a very cleansing choice, the solo piano track ‘Equipoise’ (which appeared on its composer Stanley Cowell’s 1974 solo piano album Musa – Ancestral Streams) brings this fulfilling album to a thoughtful close.

Camille Thurman
Origins
Hot Tone Music ***1/2
With a collection of 13 tracks featuring mainly her own compositions, the standard ‘Please Be Kind’ Thurman convincingly sings, and Fats Waller’s ‘Jitterbug Waltz’, the saxophonist, flautist, and vocalist is joined by Enoch Smith Jr and Luis Perdomo who share piano duties, bassist Corcoran Holt known for his work recently with Kenny Garrett, and alternating on drums Beautiful Dreamers’ Rudy Royston and Shirazette Tinnin who debuts as a leader next month with Humility: Purity of My Soul. Brandee Younger with a cameo on harp on Thurman’s swinger ‘The Dreamweaverer’ completes the line-up. Recorded in 2011 and early-2013 Origins begins at quite a clip on ‘Forward Motion’, the 27-year-old Thurman locating her sound solidly in the Sonny Rollins domain leaving a big hole for Royston to practically jump-start the tune after an opening foray. Thurman, a former student of geology, was influenced in her teens by listening to a Dexter Gordon record and you can hear a little bit of the Sophisticated Giant in the New York-based player’s sound digging deep as it were but not that much, and she certainly has a laidback style and plenty of poise. Playing a Selmer Mark VI, a make of instrument more or less synonymous with the classic sound of jazz saxophone between 1954 and 1974, completes the vintage effect. Thurman’s soprano feature on the intro to ‘Indigo Moments’ before the switch to bossa nova has great tone and there are plenty of pleasurable moments on Origins (not so sure about the less than essential scat feature on ‘Anna’s Joy’), with ‘Kindred Minds’ in particular displaying some great personality in the tenor soloing, and ‘Pursuit with a Purpose’ this very mature album’s easy stand-out.

Shirazette Tinnin
Humility: Purity of My Soul
Hot Tone Music ***
Debuting drummer Tinnin, who’s in her mid-thirties, based in New York and comes from North Carolina, leads from the back on the latest of a trio of releases on Mimi Jones’ Hot Tone Music label. Tinnin features on both her label mate Camille Thurman’s debut and Jones’ Balance and both return the favour here so it’s a broad wave of exposure to experience the drummer in different situations and a measured chance by listening to all three records to start to discover on record what Tinnin has to offer. Mostly the drummer’s own tunes plus material by McCoy Tyner (the enduring ‘Passion Dance’ opening track on 1967 Blue Note classic The Real McCoy) and Eddie Harris (‘Freedom Jazz Dance’ a tune Miles Davis included on Miles Smiles, also released in 1967). Camille Thurman asserts herself best on ‘Passion Dance’ (she later sings) and Tinnin’s support is of Tain Watts-like quality, scampering, very fast and strong. Stylistically the album is unsettled shifting from fusion to more classic hard bop and on ‘God’s Lullaby’ in pianist Willerm Delisfort’s hands hinting at a more classical stream, while Afrikkanitha’s slightly overproduced vocals on ‘The Warmest Season’ add still one more appealing dimension nonetheless. Even if it could be said that ‘My Human Condition’ verges on smooth jazz with Beyoncé saxophonist Tia Fuller, whose band Tinnin plays in, a guest, there’s a soulful presence nonetheless and Tinnin shows her rhythmic prowess behind the melody line on the track. So overall a lot of styles packed in by a powerful drummer with ideas to burn.

Jean Toussaint 4
Tate Song
Lyte Records ***1/2
Saxophonist Jean Toussaint has composure like Terence Blanchard has, his former band mate in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and displays this readily on Tate Song. That’s a given but a scarce commodity nonetheless and stemming from this there’s a head of steam built quickly on opener ‘Mood Mode’ here, pianist Andrew McCormack providing plenty of foundation while Troy Miller on drums who produced the album keeps it steady. ‘Mulgrew’, the second track (I’m guessing it’s named after the late Mulgrew Miller who Toussaint also performed with in the Messengers), allows for solemn meditation Toussaint opening up the bottom end of his tenor saxophone to find new places to explore, more feeling to measure in tribute, while Troy Miller fills and pounds, expansive within the concentric circles of improvising consciousness. A quartet record, the album’s fourth member is bassist Larry Bartley who plays with Lineage and Abdullah Ibrahim and whose role is more difficult to gauge in the early tracks but whose loping swing on ‘My Dear Ruby’, three words in a different order recalling the title of Monk’s otherwise unrelated tune, develops stimulatingly threaded in to the weave. Toussaint’s tone is rich and authoritative, flexible like a Dexter Gordon in his heyday but also spiritual at times in the Coltranian episodes and there is more depth and resource on Tate Song than any of the Toussaint albums I’ve heard hitherto. His tone is brotherly and warm throughout but there’s also plenty of drama on the frenetic ‘Rice (for CR Peppers)’, but tenderness too on ‘Tate Song’, the title track named after Toussaint’s son, and more besides on remaining tracks ‘Tunnel Vision’, with its Rollins-esque swagger and fizzy touches from McCormack, the standard ‘These Foolish Things’ taken at an amiable saunter, ‘Vera Cruz’, and ‘Vista’ best of the material here on which Toussaint switches to soprano and whose every flutter Miller shadows perfectly.

Stein Urheim
Stein Urheim
Hubro ***
This slightly odd album by Norwegian guitarist Stein Urheim, a player you might have caught with much celebrated experimental folk-jazz singer Mari Kvien Brunvoll, has plenty of homespun charm even if its five tracks meander remorselessly despite the album’s relative brevity. With only the nominal presence and the synths and effects of his co-producer Jørgen Træen for company Urheim brandishes a remarkable array of overdubbed guitars, harmonica, bouzouki, and skidding zithers of the Norwegian and Chinese variety along the way. Sometimes, as on the compellingly rootsy ‘Beijing Blues’, where you'd swear Urheim is only a step away from exploring the delta blues, it works. The rest is a bit of an amiable ramble.  

Various Artists
Creating Magic
ACT *** (2-CDs)
The Munich label ACT do not rest on their laurels and their new Duo Art series as well as a continued championing of new German jazz from the next generation of talent are just two indications of this, as well as releasing albums by the best international artists they can get their hands on, many of whom are sampled here. Creating Magic is a compilation of duo moments dating back to the early days of the label in the 1990s (although much of it is fairly recent) and over the course of its two CDs there are notable reminders of often forgotten records, one of the best things about this set. But there’s also new music and most intriguing of all is the inclusion of ‘Polygon’ a previously unreleased collaboration between new signing Norwegian sax sensation Marius Neset and one of ACT’s most recorded pianists of the new generation, Michael Wollny, whose new album Weltentraum with US bassist Tim Lefebvre and [em]’s Eric Schaefer, is released in less than a month’s time. There’s also an unreleased track by pianist Yaron Herman (‘Letter for E’), another of ACT’s brightest stars, in duo with interesting violinist Adam Bałdych, plus the inclusion of several recordings out of print. Fans of guitarist Wayne Krantz will be pleased that ‘Fate’ from the under-known 1990s album Blue Corner is included, this from a duo record with saxophonist Bob Malach, and the opener of the first CD with Malach joined by Jasper van’t Hof on ‘Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair’ is also a beauty, a fine way to begin a generous compilation. The inclusion of a track by Euro-jazz New Melodic piano pioneer Jan Johansson, a huge influence on a range of pianists from the late Esbjörn Svensson to Kit Downes, is also essential.

Norma Winstone
Dance Without Answer
ECM ****RECOMMENDED
There’s a certain oneness about Dance Without Answer. Beyond obvious empathy the trio, Winstone, joined once more for their fourth album together and more than a decade on by the Surman-esque German reeds player Klaus Gesing and Italian pianist Glauco Venier, excels on conjuring the unexpected, a swoop down low, the finishing of musical sentences, with all their discreet clauses, an easy process; and there’s a breadth of music here that is quite staggering without being overpoweringly eclectic. It’s the ambition in the vocals, the embracing of emotion and bravery with each improvising situation that’s immediate and also the risks Winstone takes with her voice tunnelling deep into the emotional depths of the lyrics. There’s a tristesse here that’s palpable and a directness about tackling themes of separateness in human relationships and the inherent difficulty of communication. Winstone can add detail to a song you wouldn’t think is there, created by a pause or a harmonic shift that Gesing knows exactly how to move to some sort of instrumental resolution while Venier surrounds and caresses, finding modes to match the moods. Up there with Distances, their best work together, the inclusion of the complex title track as well as the moving ‘It Might Be You’ just two of many reasons to discover this remarkable record.