Continuing with multiple short reviews to try to make up some of the ground lost over the summer, I’ve got a few that stretch across several styles: Tobias Hoffmann Jazz Orchestra, Sorry for Laughing, and Miguel Zenón.
Tobias Hoffmann Jazz Orchestra
Conspiracy (Mons Records)
A review
Composer, arranger, saxophonist Tobias Hoffmann introduced himself to me back in early 2020 with his splendid award-winning nonet album Retrospective. Now, he’s put down the horn and picked up the baton to lead his own 18-piece orchestra in an equally splendid outing of 10 original compositions, Conspiracy. Remarkably, this twice-as-big aggregation is just as nimble and synched up as its predecessor. Hoffmann’s compositions are just as crisp, and his arrangements/orchestrations are, if anything, even more richly colored and expressive. The precision and craftsmanship in the writing/arranging and the high-performance delivery by the orchestra beg for the cliché of German engineering—except that Hoffmann lives in Austria, and I don’t want to suggest that there is anything mechanical about this vividly expressive storytelling. The title track opens the proceedings with jarring, dissonant chords that raise the level of anxiety from the get-go, and the piece moves through reflective, agitated, and hypnotic sections that delve into the emotional cost that conspiracy theories extract. “Elegy” offers a creative arrangement for horns only. There’s a 12-tone row exercise that feels like an exercise until the composer breaks the chains, and there’s a rock-inflected track with a blazing guitar solo. Hoffmann offers a diverse selection of tunes with a consistent quality of clarity and depth.
Sorry for Laughing
Remember, You Are an Actor (Klang Galerie)
A review
Mysterious and evocative, Remember, You Are an Actor, the new release from Sorry for Laughing, offers a curiously commanding combination of the antique and the contemporary (e.g., hurdy-gurdy and electronics), the literary and the theatrical (e.g., lyrics drawn from Dylan Thomas [“Polly’s Song”] and a play compressed into a song [“Mansions at Rest”]), the melodic and the atmospheric (e.g., “Soul Wanderer” and “Mad Shadows [You Are an Actor]”). Led by Gordon H. Whitlow (Hammond organs, accordion, piano, Rhodes, winds, production, processing), Sorry for Laughing seems to have tuned into the 19th century, but on a device that is getting cross-interference from a 21st-century avant-garde radio station. There’s something ominous, dark, and threatening in much of the album, but relentlessly fascinating, and islands of sweetness ( “Friends Forever” and “Last Day awake”) offer respite. The opening track, “Place,” sets the tone with a harrowing nightmare dreamt by someone suffering from imposter syndrome. In addition to Whitlow, Sorry for Laughing includes Martyn Bates (of Eyeless in Gaza: vocals, banjo, tin whistles, lyrics), Patrick Q. Wright (violin, viola), Janet Feder (electric guitars, effects), Edward Ka-Spel (of Legendary Pink Dots: vocals, keyboards, sound effects, atmospheres, environmental recordings, lyrics), with David Zekman (violin), Steve Tyler (hurdy-gurdy), Nigel Whitlow (trumpet, brass), and Tom Katsimpalis (oral recitation).
Miguel Zenón
Música de las Américas (Miel Music)
A review
As much a cultural artifact as a musical presentation, the latest release from saxophonist Miguel Zenón’s quartet, Música de las Américas, tours distinct styles from across South America and the Caribbean in a historical review of the indigenous people, the European colonizers, and their collision. Architecturally sound, emotionally rich, intellectually stimulating, and informed by Zenón’s immersion in the region’s history, the album asks listeners to reassess their conception of who and what the Americas are, and in its accompanying booklet, Zenón contextualizes each track within that history. The quartet, with Luis Perdomo (piano), Hans Glawischnig (bass), and Henry Cole (drums), without doubt one of the great jazz quartets of the century, is supplemented by Los Pleneros de la Cresta (panderos, percussion, vocals) on “Navegando (Las Estrellas Nos Guían),” Paoli Mejías (percussion) on “Opresión y Revolución,” Victór Emmanuelli (berril de bomba) on “Bámbula,” and Daniel Díaz (congas—and oh, what congas they are) on “Antillano.” Leaving the cultural context aside, the album offers exhilarating jazz with roots extending deep into different soils across the Americas.
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