Two splendid recordings, one from bass clarinetist Todd Marcus’s nonet and the other from cornetist Kirk Knuffke’s new trio, each bring to life the expressive intelligence of both the leaders and their colleagues.

Todd Marcus Jazz Orchestra
In the Valley (Stricker Street Records)
A review
Each successive release from bass clarinetist Todd Marcus presents a new and deeper marvel of composing, arranging, and performing. In the Valley includes perhaps his most personal compositions to date and his most detailed and complex arrangements, performed with an astonishing discipline by the nonet. Drawing on his Egyptian ethnicity (his dad was Egyptian) and experiences, Marcus blends two traditions—the Middle Eastern maqam and American jazz—on six vibrant tracks. The solo piano renders the brief “Horus (intro),” introducing the structure for “Horus,” on which you can hear Marcus move in and out of the two traditions, exploring the former with the tools of the latter. “The Hive” opens with the city of Cairo awaking and is soon abuzz with the day’s activity, while “Cairo Street Ride” rides on layers of activity in a programmatic tour of the city’s hair-raising traffic. The theme for the reflective “Final Days” came to Marcus as he lay in bed in his childhood home, caught up in recollections, a few months after his father passed on. The title track closes the album in a majestic, cinematic, and fabulously over-the-top homage to the Valley of the Kings—and all the movie soundtracks that have attemped to communicate its grandeur. Vivid, buoyant, and emotionally articulate, Marcus’s music sings with feeling and intelligence that is beautifully communicated by the orchestra: Marcus (bass clarinet), Greg Tardy (tenor sax), Brent Birckhead (flute and alto sax), Russell Kirk (alto sax), Alex Norris (trumpet), Alan Ferber (trombone), Xavier Davis (piano), Jeff Reed (bass), and Eric Kennedy (drums).

Kirk Knuffke Trio
Gravity without Airs (Tao Forms)
A review
Supergroups are more often a disaster than a success. It’s hard to conjure correspondence among musicians when each has a strikingly distinctive voice and is used to running the show. This is not a problem with cornetist Kirk Knuffke’s new trio, a certifiable supergroup that includes pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist Michael Bisio. (You won’t miss the missing drummer.) It may help that Bisio has played in duos with each of the other two. In any event, the three men—each a presence on the adventurous music scene and each able to summon unimaginably expressive sounds from his instrument—ride the same light beams across 14 tracks on two CDs, 6 from Knuffke’s pen and 8 from collective collaboration, sometimes spontaneous. Each of these three possesses exceptional technique and ginormous ears, and plays with an intuitive sense that follows the feeling. Feeling is form here, and the objective is beauty—tender, rough, playful, giddy, or angry as it may be. The range of expression is expansive, from the playfully serene “Time Is Another River” to the tsunamic violence of “The Water Will Win,” the near lullaby of “Paint Pale Silver” to the dense churn of “Stars Go Up,” the outrage of “Birds of Passage” to the balladry of “Today for Today.” You may not go out the door whistling these tunes, but this is serious and beautiful music that demands concentrated listening.

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© 2022 Mel Minter