Joelle Leandre & Jerome Bourdellon, Evidence

Not everything is everything. In fact some things aren't much of anything. Not true of Evidence (Relative Pitch 1010) by Joelle Leandre & Jerome Bourdellon. It is neither not much nor is it everything. Which means it is the right thing. What makes it right is the chemistry created by the two artists.

Joelle Leandre has been one of the premiere avant acoustic bassists for some time. She is marvelous, inventive, a sound-texture artist of the highest order, respected by her peers and critics alike. Jerome Bourdellon is not well-known to me but comes through on this recording as fully worthy of this major collaboration. He covers the contrabass flute, C flute, bass flute, bass clarinet and piccolo masterfully, giving Ms. Leandre a full spectrum of pitch zones to react against, which between the conventional pizzicato and bowed pitch ranges and those gained by harmonics, is just as wide.

We are talking about free improvisation here, as many would expect. And it's all about sound color and space, yes, but also about pitch sequences. Joelle is a master of such things and also a vocalist that has carved out her own style of out scatting, which she does at times here (and Jerome sometimes joins in with vocals too, effectively). Bourdellon keeps pace with Ms. Leandre, which is saying something. He has excellent tone control and sound generation inventiveness, yes, but also can run lines that go head-to-head with Joelle's prowess in that zone.

Evidence has excellent pace in its movement from instrument combination to instrument combination, from mood to mood, from color and run to color and run.

Marvellous duo! Beautiful playing! You won't be disappointed. It's very good in everything it does. And it's very worth having even if you don't seek to have everything!

Joe Morris, Agusti Fernandez, Nate Wooley, From the Discrete to the Particular

Joe Morris has become one of the very seminal free music guitarists out there today. He's written a book on playing free that I am reading right now, teaches at New England Conservatory and has made a large impact through many recordings and of course personal appearances. For the album on tap today he plays acoustic guitar (or at least it's his semi-hollow with little amplification, not sure) and joins in chamber free trio improvisations with trumpetmaster Nate Wooley (who has also become a centripetal force on his instrument) and pianist Augusti Fernandez, perhaps a lesser-known artist but fully at the level of the other two in his own way.

From the Discrete to the Particular (Relative Pitch 1008) brings the three together live at Firehouse 12 in New Haven in 2011. The triple-tiered interplay can get downright contrapuntal, which is only logical given the players and what they tend to do. But at all times there are various zone interactions going on, each player plotting out an aural spot and then working off the other two in the zones they establish. Seven individual pieces vary the freedom in ways that keep it interesting and exciting.

The harmonic texture of the music primarily comes out of the overlapping, interacting melody lines. The high inventive level of those lines and how they work as a triumvarate is what makes the music come through, makes it all "pop" so to speak. And pop it certainly does. The threesome have chosen their version of the open road; they challenge each other to get spontaneous chamber combustion on a continuous basis, and it happens. This is not easy music to do well. It is a tribute to the musical ears and imagination of the players that they succeed, that they plummet the hurdles of free playing in tandem. This music is vital!

Ingebrigt Haker Flaten New York Quartet, Now Is

When people in the jazz avant camp emerge from the scene gigging and recording with some heavy cats, there is always a reason. Contrabassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten is certainly one of those lately. And the reason is that he can really play. So when he puts together a disk with some of the heaviest cats, his New York Quartet doing Now Is (Clean Feed 263), it is an affirmation.

Heavy cats? Mr. Joe McPhee on tenor, Mr. Joe Morris on guitar, and Mr. Nate Wooley on trumpet. That qualifies as heavy. Each is a leader on his instrument, a bandleader in his own right, and the melding of all four on a free date is all you'd hope for.

This is a drummerless group, which makes Flaten's bass playing stand out all the more. The result is four equal solo voices engaging in dense free counterpoint.

Everybody is in good form. It's something excellent to sink your ears in.

Diamond Terrifier, Kill the Self that Wants to Kill Yourself

Diamond Terrifier is Sam Hillmer. It's Sam Hillmer playing alto sax and maybe a tenor and/or a baritone? It's Sam Hillmer with a bunch of pedals and effects, what used to be called electronics, and is still called electronics by those who prefer the term. I don't care. There sounds like other things are going on on this 30-something minute recording, but I guess that's a keyboard or a sequencer driving the tones? Again. I don't care, really.

It's Sam Hillmer coming out of the noise scene, unaffected by jazz for the most part. I have no idea what that means, but the press sheet says something like that, so I thought I'd mention it to you.

Oh, the CD album is Diamond Terrifier's Kill the Self That Wants to Kill Yourself (Northern Spy CD 026).

His sax playing is free and noisy, for the most part. The electronics are atmospheric and sometimes melodically-harmonically pivotal to the music at hand.

Free sorts of things prevail, but at the beginning and end there are structural openings and closings.

I liked it.