Michael Musillami Trio + 4, "Mettle," Advanced Jazz for Septet

Guitarist, jazz composer, bandleader. Any one of these things is tough enough to do when you are putting forward an advanced sort of progressive semi-electric jazz, as is Michael Musillami with his Trio + 4 and their album Mettle (Playscape 070111). Yet Micheal does all these things rather exceptionally well. His trio of self, Joe Fonda, bass, and George Schuller, drums, has held together, gigged and recorded a fair number of albums so far, getting more intensely together, tighter in a telepathic sense. Now they bring in four additional soloists/ensemble members for a quite ambitious program. There isn't a single slouch in the bunch: Matt Moran, vibes, Russ Johnson, trumpet, Jeff Lederer, tenor & clarinet, and Ned Rothenberg on alto & clarinet. They add much in a collective and solo sense to the music.

And of course you have the formidable, keen-edged sensibilities of the trio as backbone. Musillami plays a grinding, driving post-fusion guitar with a sound, rhythmic push and inventive notefulness that puts him on his own plane. Fonda and Schuller work together with a beautiful free-swing loose-tightness.

The compositions are weighty, the arrangements strong, the band cooks, the soloists get torque collectively and individually.

It's a bit of a monster. A nice monster of a set. Get it.

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey at Their Very Best: Race Riot Suite

The Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey have continually gone their own way. I must say I have not liked absolutely everything they've done, and at 21 albums (!) and counting I've missed a few. I do think they've entered a very productive stage in the last few albums. And their Race Riot Suite (Royal Potato Family), just out today I believe, puts them in vital territory.

It's the regular band [Brian Haas, piano; Chris Combs, steel guitar; Jeff Harshbarger, contrabass; and Josh Raymer, drums] plus five horns: Steven Bernstein on trumpet plus tenor-bari, two more tenors and trombone. It's a full-length suite that depicts musically a racial pogram that took place in Tulsa in 1921. It was brought on by a racist and manipulative white oil elite in tandem with the local government and the news media that did their bidding. That's a dark subject matter indeed and Chris Combs has created a work that expresses simultaneously a sense of outrage and a matter-of-factly dark sensibility in very creative terms.

The writing is excellent, with the core band and especially Combs's steel interacting with the horns for a brashly raucous music that has the freedom and fire of Carla Bley's Genuine Tong Funeral and Liberation Music, only a great deal more darkness. It is a marvelous pairing of the sharply defined individuality of the players with a score that is ultra-expressive.

Every bit of this suite counts; there is no dead weight whatsoever. In the end you get a sense of a musical reckoning, a retribution in tone, a emotionally wrought expression of disgust and sorrow. It does to my mind establish Chris Combs as an important jazz composer of our era, someone I hope we can look to for more music such as this.

It's music that disturbs, haunts and ultimately, honors the victims with a kind of musical memorial. Excellent music; highly recommended.