A few weeks ago, when I complained about many jazz solos sounding the same these days, I discovered that I was not alone. One colleague put it this way: “Too many jazz degrees, not enough jazz players.” Well, we don’t need to worry about that on these two releases. Most of these folks have jazz degrees, and they are all jazz players.
Beginning on Wednesday, April 8, at noon, the first of five weekly Tiny Census Concerts (TCC) on I Count NM’s Facebook page will take place. Sponsored by the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Complete Count Committee, the concerts will leverage the influence of New Mexico musicians to encourage citizens to complete the census form and will provide generous remuneration for their services. The first concert’s slate includes Joy Harjo, Rosalind Sanders Jones, Lara Manzanares, Larry Mitchell, Hillary Smith/Chris Dracup, and Jackie Zamora. Artists can apply for future concerts in the series by visiting the TCC website.
Jazz speaks in many dialects, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that different musical genres find it easy to apply jazz techniques to their native material. Gilfema (Lionel Loueke, Massimo Biolcati, Ferenc Nemeth) applies them to a West African musical palette; the Kenny Barron|Dave Holland Trio, Featuring Johnathan Blake, to a collection of compositions squarely in the mainstream of the American jazz tradition; Grégoire Maret, Romain Collin, and Bill Frisell, to a range of material in the Americana songbook. In sum, we have three outstanding trios offering three satisfying new recordings across a range of sensibilities.
Kirk Knuffke and Ernesto Cervini take acoustic and electric approaches, respectively, in their sophisticated and accessible new releases. Both deliver terrific new compositions (Cervini adds a jazz standard and a Vince Mendoza song), and the compelling performances give me hope for the future of jazz just when I was beginning to think that every solo I was hearing sounded just like the previous one and that complex vacancy was the order of the day.
The word jazz embraces music of many different styles and concepts. Pianist Eunhye Jeong’s The Colliding Beings, CHI-DA, explodes familiar forms with freely improvised compositions that marry avant-garde concepts with Korean folk traditions, while Cri$el Gems from bassist Paul Bryan takes an electric, groove-based approach to more familiar forms.
