Best Album, Guitar: Richard Pinhas, Oren Ambarchi, Tikkun (Cuneiform) See review, October 31, 2014.
Best Album, Bass: Benjamin Duboc, St. James Infirmary, Solo Double-Bass (Improvising Beings) See review, June 20, 2014.
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Best Album, Wild Card: Jon Lundbom and Big Five Chord, Liverevil (Hot Cup) See review, February 4, 2014.
The sound color of the mix foregrounds in this series of four improvisations. The "string trio" of piano (including prepared and inside-the-piano approaches), harp and guitar (played in both conventional and unconventional ways) contrasts with sax and flute. The percussion plays in part a kind of mediating role between the two sections.
It is music that straddles "free jazz" and new music improvisation, with an open sound and a creative knack of making significant statements in various combinations and groupings.
The quintet realizes music of dynamic ebb and flow. There is an episodic structure to it all, a kind of free narrative that holds together with an inner logic of expression born of close listening and unhesitant resolution.
More than that? They make music that works on many levels. It is avant atmospherics of the sort that makes for an absorbing listen. Hear this if you can!
As before the music gets fully treated by Eric's talented group: Eric on guitar, Jerry Sabatini on trumpet, Todd Brunel on clarinet and bass clarinet, Junko Fujiwara on cello, and Curt Newton on drums.
As with volume one Eric does not give you an end-to-end transcription of the original work, but instead selects key motives and sections, giving the themes to various instrumental combinations and slanting the phrases at times for a more jazzed reading. And then as before there is a good amount of room for improvisation, which comes off excellently with both avant and early jazz elements.
The Messiaen really lends itself to this treatment, maybe even more so than the Stravinsky, and Eric makes much out of the music so that it convinces fully as jazz for today. There are certain passages of the work that sound so boppish you'd think Messiaen meant them that way. But kudos to Hofbauer for hearing the potential and realizing it so well. Eric, Jerry and Todd get some really interesting solos going too, at times simultaneously.
It is no easy feat to pull this off, but Hofbauer and company do so with style, swinging heat and smarts. This one brings it on home! Many stars, if I rated things that way. Highly recommended!
Then he writes some fine tunes and arranges them with excellent sensibilities.
You get all this on his album Quartet Plus (First Orbit Sounds 222). The title puts it to you: you get half the album with his lively quartet; the other half adds five horns for a bigger sound. The quartet includes some very nice playing from Bennett Roth-Newell on piano and keys, Dan Robbins on upright and electric bass, and Cody Rhodes on drums. These are very capable associates who negotiate the compositional nuances of the Razavi originals, swing and funk along as one would hope for, and solo when called upon with style and skill. Listen to Dan Robbins for example on "From Thoughts to Words" and you'll hear some excellent bass work.
Then the larger band pieces come through with great part writing and a flourish.
Most of all there is the showcase of Razavi as guitar enchanter, a player who picks his notes wisely and comes through with the classicism of Benson, Burrell, maybe Hall, a subtle way but soulful too when he chooses and the music fits it. There's a little boppishness and lots of postbop.
It's a fine album on every count. Mason Razavi is serious! Seriously good. Seriously talented.
The initial volume: Prehistoric Jazz, Volume 1: The Rite of Spring (Creative Nation Music CNM 025) arranges Stravinsky's iconic orchestral work of the same name. We discussed the Bad Plus version of the work a while back (type in search box for the article), but this one is different. Where the Bad Plus took the score and arranged it in A-to-B fashion for a piano trio, Hofbauer zeroes in on critical segments of the score and reworks them for sextet, inserting adaptations and jazz elements and at the same time allowing for a good deal of improvisation in a through-composed way.
The band has their hands full realizing the motifs and getting loose and free improvisationally, or even at times sounding like an early jazz band and/or Duke's Jungle period outfit, too. Much credit goes to the arrangements/arranger, and to the sextet itself also for their creative transformations. Eric is on guitar, Jerry Sabatini on trumpet, Todd Brunel on Bb clarinet and bass clarinet, Junko Fujiwara on cello, and Curt Newton on drums.
This is a jazzification of the Rite all the way, yet there is the essence of Stravinsky's work there as well. It's very successful, very creative and enjoyable to hear. If you don't know the original you should deal with that, too, it goes without saying.
But Eric Hofbauer is up to very much good here. Check it out and you'll get it!
It's music high on composed content, with intricate finger work, looping acumen, and some full-out rocking in a controlled, well-paced sequence. You may hear a little Holdsworth there as precedent, but it goes well beyond that into a Pirog zone. There is smart notefulness, a rock-sustain guitar sound when needed and some really excellent trio work from the three together. There's a touch of alternate avant rocking here (some scronk done with a relish) and a complete lack of cliche.
You may know him as part of the two-member Janel & Anthony, whose work is covered here very favorably (type the name in the search box).
This shows us the full artist, guitar wizard, music tunesmith of power and depth. It's a beautiful record. I hope Anthony Pirog can give us lots more in the coming years. He promises as much as he delivers!
Today's artists are a good example. Vocalist Boris Savoldelli and guitarist Garrison Fewell are artists totally in-the-moment. They are unpredictable in the most creative sense. You can never be sure what either will do. And so their pairing turns out to be auspicious...by virtue of the free-wheeling, anything goes approach they take on and the success of the risk-taking they allow themselves.
Their duo album Electric Bat Conspiracy (Creative Nation 024) puts the two in various zones as they see fit. Yet it does not jar but instead seems inevitable after a few listens. There is a Lou Reed tune and a couple of standards. The rest is open-form, yet contrastingly structured freedom.
You listen and you hear a musicality that comes out of work and inspiration in equal amounts. Garrison is a free player who is informed by his mainstream jazz training. He brings with him all the harmonic and melodic things you learn to become super-proficient on the guitar, and that is much, in the bop and after-context. And he applies that with his own special sensibility to the project at hand. At the same time Boris has finely tuned his vocal instrument over a long period so he isn't "just" winging it, but applying ways of going about things that have to do with training and experience.
The fact that both have travelled far from mainstream concerns makes the standards as they approach them all that more challenged--they defy the melodies, lyrics and harmonies to yield further things than they do in "standard hands" and they get something far different from them.
They also have compositional ideas of their own that they bring out well, such as "Circle Round." Then there is the flat-out outness that has to do with sound color and expression.
The end-product is a vocal-guitar duet set that takes us in very original directions, so much so that your first hearing, like mine, might be a sort of "WTF?!" For me that was my first take. Then I kept listening and it all started coming together for me, bit-by-bit, until now and I get it completely.
It's daring. The vocalizations, the guitar work and the ambiance. Daring. I can't say it fits any mould. Either a mainstream or an avant mould do not fit this music. That is in fact excellent! So listen to this one and get someplace different. It's worth the effort.
