Legions of music fans hear the tune "Take the 'A' Train" and immediately think of Duke

I can say patently that I do not come to this recording as a die-hard fan of organ jazz. In fact this is the only jazz organ recording I own and this one was given to me. Until I attended Joey DeFrancesco's gig at the Dakota last winter, I had intentionally avoided organ dates. I was not totally converted by Joey D, but I was warming up. Then I heard the amazing Dr. Lonnie Smith with sax veteran Lou Donaldson in August, and the fabulously subtle Mike LeDonne (with Eric Alexander) just last week, and I was even closer to admitting that the Hammond B-3 was a powerful jazz voice. Now, hearing local "organizer" Holloman with his regular Tuesday Night Band, I have arrived--count me among the believers. This is jazz, not stadium or elevator music, and while it is indeed "satisfying to consume," it requires as much effort and musicianship to reach artistic nirvana as any jazz endeavor. "Easy to make?" Maybe as easy as a critical review.

Tucked under the Hamm Building in downtown St. Paul is the Twin Cities' answer to the famed Village Vanguard--a no frills, basement jazz club. No food, a basic (sometimes smokey) bar, and generally an audience primed for jazz rather than conversation. Owner Kenny Horst is a musician himself, and the AQ is a venue for musicians and their music. Unlike the Vanguard, you can come and go as you please, order a drink when the spirits move you, and neither Horst nor host Davis Wilson ever make you feel like they did you a favor to open the door.

It was this artist-friendly setting that gave birth to the quartet, How Birds Work. After about a year of popular, near-weekly gigs, HBW has released its first recording, Live at the Artists Quarter. And according to CD Baby, "It's jazz. Some of it is out there, some if isn't. Some of it has a little bit of a rock tinge. A lot of it doesn't." I agree, and I would also add "it is simultaneously accessible and challenging" for the listener.

Live at the AQ is an ambitious recording, with tough covers for a first outing, including well-known classics of master composers, Coltrane's "Equinox," Hancock's "Maiden Voyage," and Shorter's "Footprints." These have been performed many times by legendary artists--with the bar set so high, this could be a dangerous play list, but these guys are up to the challenge, and throw in three originals to boot.

How Birds Work is the collaboration of four well-known area musicians--guitarist Dean Granros, keyboard specialist Peter Schimke, bassist Billy Peterson, and AQ owner and drummer Kenny Horst. Each of these artists has established his reputation through diverse routes.

Come Together (Lynne Arriale Trio, Motema Records)

Come Together, set for release on Motéma Records on September 14^th, is the 9^th recording and 10^th anniversary celebration of the Lynne Arriale Trio. And given the consistently stellar live performances and recordings of this ensemble over the past decade, these musicians should have much higher profiles. Perhaps this recording will deservedly reach a wider audience.

Lynne Arriale has been standing the critical jazz audience on its ear for more than ten years with her exquisite melodies, deceptively simple lines, and what Jazz Times described as “a flawless touch, an impeccable sense of complex rhythms, and a harmonic curiosity.” A classical piano graduate of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music before turning to jazz, Arriale established her chops subbing for Marian McPartland in the 1991 “100 Golden Fingers" tour of Japan, where she performed with piano legends Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Barron, Cedar Walton, and Monty Alexander. Since earning first place in the 1993 Great American Jazz Piano Competition, Arriale has concentrated exclusively on her piano trio. Bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Steve Davis have been her collaborators for much of the past ten years—Davis in fact has been her timekeeper on every recording. And together, this threesome has produced some of the most elegantly accessible yet sophisticated music of any small jazz ensemble working today.

“Brain” (Telarc, 2004)

Vastly eclectic in her tastes and influences (which range from Jamal and Oscar Peterson to Franz Liszt and King Crimson), Hiromi studied classical and jazz piano in her native Japan, performed with Chick Corea at 17, and attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Her first recording, Another Mind (Telarc, 2003), was praised by the Los Angeles Times for its tendency to "vibrate and surge with the non-stop sensory stimulation of the ginza, with busy bass lines and crisply dissonant harmonies."

Recorded at the Artists’ Quarter in St. Paul, Minnesota, this CD documents the phenomenon which is the Tuesday Night band: Soul jazz at its finest, served up fresh, hot, and dripping with grease. The band is Kenny Horst on drums, Gary Berg on saxophone, and Billy Holloman on the Hammond B3 organ.

Mozart called the organ “the king of instruments,” and the king is still ascendant on Tuesday nights at the AQ.