“I’m learning so much. I think my life will be a journey to find as many places to be as possible.”

--Hiromi Uehara (Jazz Times, February 2010) 

Hiromi©Andrea Canter

Once a young phenomenon import from Japan, Hiromi Uehara is now a U.S. resident and only a slightly older phenomenon (now 30) when it comes to anything with a keyboard. Her initial trio exploits (Another Mind, Brain, Spiral) expanded to her Sonicbloom Quartet (Time Control, Beyond Standard), and with each recording and subsequent tour, the Berklee College grad set the bar higher and, it seemed, louder. Her virtuosic skills were often compared to Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson, her composing skills to Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, and her daredevil style to no one else. As she introduced more electronic elements, her fan base perhaps expanded in some directions and shrank a bit in others, but there was no doubting that this was a unique and significant voice in modern jazz.  

Palindrome

Drummer Billy Cobham has performed with a variety of musicians throughout his career. Former employers include hard bop pianist Horace Silver, tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, and smooth jazz guitarist George Benson.  Cobham has also appeared with the Grateful Dead and the Saturday Night Live Band.  While he has encountered numerous ensembles and genres in the past half century, the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame inductee is best known for his abilities in a fusion setting.  Cobham’s 2010 release, Palindrome (Multimedia Concepts), is further evidence supporting this case.    

“It was easy to see him as a manic builder, a modernist renovator, coming up with expansions and compressions everywhere but somehow honoring the fundamental flow and beauty of the building. He did take songs apart, but he never entirely betrayed or abandoned them, and you could quickly identify what he was playing.” --Ben Ratliffe, NY Times (on the live performance at the Village Vanguard, 10/11/07) 

I Can't Give You Anything But Love

Critic Ben Ratliffe’s summation of a rare U.S. appearance by European piano master Martial Solal equally applies to the resulting live recording, released in early 2009. The 82-year-old native of Algiers became one of the most lauded pianists in Europe in the 1960s, performing in solo, trio and big band contexts. Winner of the coveted Jazzpar Prize (1999), Solal made somewhat of a name for himself in the US when presented at Newport, but has only returned to perform twice since. In 2007 he became only the second pianist to have a week of solo performance at the Village Vanguard (after Fred Hersch in 2006). Long described as stylistically eclectic, Solal brought all artistic weapons to the stage, the resulting 9 tracks suggesting a collaboration between the imagination of Thelonious Monk and technical virtuosity of Art Tatum. 

Folk Art

Known as much for his inventive compositions and eclectic ensembles as for his power and lyricism on the horn, Grammy winner Joe Lovano has enjoyed a stream of vital collaborations with such legendary performers as Paul Motian, John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, and Gunther Schuller. His eclecticism is evident in recent projects ranging from duets to quartets to big bands, but perhaps never more stunning than with his new quintet project, Us Five, and their recent release, Folk Art (2009, Blue Note).  

Recently dubbed the CD of the Year by Jazz Times, the merger of veterans Lovano and pianist James Weidman with relative youngsters Esperanza Spalding on bass and two percussionists, Francisco Mela and Otis Brown III, yields a masterful array of original Lovano compositions that range from glorious statements to herky-jerky acrobatics to free range conversations. And beyond his compositional versatility we are treated to Joe Lovano’s talents on an oddball melange of horns--tenor and straight alto saxes, alto clarinet, taragato and aulochrome, with a side order of gongs. The two drummers add such artillery as ankle bells, ascending and descending opera gongs, pandero, dumbek and Ethiopian drums, yet never overpower the group effort. 

“...one of the most emotional dates I've ever done...You could kind of hear his voice inside of the music." –Terell Stafford

Coming Together

Thus one of the titans of modern jazz trumpet described the experience of recording the music of young saxophonist Brendan Romaneck. In spring 2005, at just 24, Romaneck was on the brink of recording a set of mostly original compositions with Stafford, pianist Keith Javors, bassist Delbert Felix and drummer John Davis. A car accident cut short that dream, and the life and career of a very promising talent. His parents, in the roles of executive producers, and Javors as producer, have ensured that his music lives on through Coming Together.

Marbin

Marbin is a Chicago-by-way-of-Israel duo of Dani Rabin on guitar and Danny Markovich on saxophone. They deftly layer their voices, assemble and deconstruct them in a way which makes for a full, trancey sound in which the listener's head is washed over by a sonic multitude of two.  

As everything must be labeled for point of reference, they bill themselves as “ambient jazz” but, really, even a cursory listen will show how easily they jump if not outright defy genres. They continue in the tradition of artists such as King Crimson and John Zorn, and some of the more organic/acoustic component turnbulists (Kruder& Dorfmeister, Amon Tobin, et al.). To be sure, some of their influences show but not as template mimicry executed with new technology as to try to hide it, but as inspiration to fuel their own outward journey toward the muse. It would also be easy to lump them into a jam band category, but even a casual listen to their work shows it does not contain the same repetitions, which can quickly become dull. Nor should they be lumped in with a lot of the “new” thing people often get excited about, in which novelty (non-jazz cover songs, rock influences) is cited as a thing which may inject new life into jazz. Rather, Marbin's work transcends gimmick and possesses a greater degree of tension and release.