For his follow-up to 2016's
purely improvised studio recording Strength & Power (featuring pianist
Jamie Saft, bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Balazs Pandi), the ever-adventurous
trombonist-composer Roswell Rudd made a decided shift in direction on his first
RareNoiseRecords release as a leader by embracing jazz standards he has loved
and played throughout his long and illustrious career. Accompanied by the
brilliant pianist Lafayette Harris, upright bass virtuoso Ken Filiano and
soulful vocal sensation Fay Victor, the 81-year-old jazz master (who turns 82
years old on November 17, the day of the release) delivers with rare potency
and poignancy on the aptly-titled Embrace. This intimate, drum-less quartet session
is brimming with conversational playing between all the participants, with Rudd
and Victor partaking in some particularly interactive exchanges on jazz
classics like Billy Strayhorn's "Something to Live For," Charles
Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," Thelonious Monk's beautiful ballad
"Pannonica," the standard "Can't We Be Friends" and the
traditional "House of the Rising Sun."
Rudd has high praise for his empathetic partners on Embrace.
"Lafayette Harris is one of the best accompanists that I ever played with.
Boy, is he there! He's not only ahead of the music, he's in the moment and
behind it all at the same time. It's amazing to find somebody who can play like
that. It's as if Lafayette has been there all my life when I play with him.
Kenny Filiano is a virtuoso of the bass, particularly with the bow. Let the
world be told and shown! And Fay Victor is my most recent discovery. Fay is an
instrument, a voice, a personality, a spirit...all of those and more."
Of the members in this Embrace quartet, Rudd goes back
furthest with Filiano (the bassist appears on the trombonist's 2000 album Broad
Strokes as well as 2011's The Incredible Honk). Harris appeared on Rudd's 2008
album Keep Your Heart Right (which had a similar drum-less quartet
configuration featuring vocalist Sunny Kim) and also on The Incredible Honk.
Victor previously made a guest appearance on two tracks from 2013's Trombone
For Lovers.
"I like playing without drums occasionally and I've
done that a bit over the years," says Rudd. "I hear the harmonics of
the singers a lot better when the drums aren't there. I don't know, it just
seems to work better for me with voice and piano. Getting those interactions is
something that's very important to me, which I learned about from Sheila Jordan
and some other vocalists that I've been lucky enough to play with. I really
want to hear the whole harmonic series of the singers when I play with them.
And you know that's a very delicate and temperamental place to come from."
Rudd treads delicately on the tender opener, "Something
to Live For," a 1939 song, which marked the first collaboration between
Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. Following a beautiful solo piano intro,
Rudd sings the melody through his horn in raucous yet poignant fashion, like
latter day Billie Holiday. Victor enters and the trombonist proceeds to shadow
and comment on her soulful singing through the remainder of the piece.
They inject a lively, almost calypso type bounce into
Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," a tune mostly played as a brooding,
funereal dirge. "That version came from playing it over and over when we
got together," says Rudd. "This is what eventually emerged."
Victor showcases her scatting prowess on this number before singing the Rahsaan
Roland Kirk lyrics, which the saxophonist had penned for his 1976 album The
Return of the 5000 Lb. Man. "Yeah, we got our own take on it,"
continues Rudd. "And that tune is so infectious it is bound to get to each
musical personality in its own way. And that's what we are. We're four musical
personalities who go together, whatever we're playing."
Victor channels her inner Betty Carter on a jaunty, swinging
rendition of "Can't We Be Friends," which features the vocalist in
some daring scat exchanges with Rudd's muted trombone. "I think Fay
started singing it one day and it just took over," Rudd recalls. That's
it. It was just right for us."
Their raucous rendition of Ray Noble's "I Hadn't Anyone
Till You" is bristling with energy and supported by Harris' Fats
Walleresque touch on piano. Rudd explains the origins of his collaboration with
Victor on this 1938 chestnut: "We wanted to do something together but we
really didn't know each other that well. And she finally said, 'Do you know, 'I
Hadn't Anyone Till You?' and I said, 'Yeah! And I hadn't been able to find
anybody to play that with. So let's do that one.' So that brought us together.
That got us started right there, doing that song. And we've kept that up."
Filiano's bowed bass intro to the lovely "Too Late
Now" (from the 1951 Fred Astaire-Jane Powell movie Royal Wedding)
showcases his low-end virtuosity while Victor reveals her romantic side in
interpreting the Alan Jay Lerner lyrics. Rudd, who contributes one of his most
lyrical solos of the session here, next testifies on his trombone on a chilling
rendition of "House of the Rising Sun," which also features Victor in
a most expressive Carmen McRae mode.
"I Look in the Mirror," a smart, swinging, Blossom
Dearie-styled ditty about accepting the aging process, was written by Rudd's
partner, Verna Gillis. "That was one of the first things we collaborated
on," says Rudd. "And I didn't feel it as a sultry ballad or a sad
song, I felt like a Dixielander on that one."
The album closes with a heartfelt reading of Monk's most
beautiful ballad, "Pannonica," a tune he composed in 1956 as a
tribute to jazz patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. It's a tune that
Rudd has played countless times since 1962, when he formed a band with
saxophonist Steve Lacy that specialized in Monk's music. "I used to play
'Pannonica' a lot with Steve Lacy. We later recorded it together on an album we
did, called Monk's Dream (2000, Verve). So I was used to playing it in Monk's
original key, which is C. But Fay came in with it in A flat, so that threw me
off a little bit. Because everything lies so beautifully in that song and with
Monk's music in general that you tend to remember it where he wrote it, where
he played it. So that took a little adjustment." Victor gives a heartfelt
reading of Jon Hendricks' lyrics on this achingly beautiful ballad while Rudd
turns in a remarkably expressive solo on this Monk classic.
Embrace is the latest chapter in the extraordinary career of
the revered trombonist, who came up playing Dixieland in college before dipping
into the avant-garde in the early '60s with the likes of Cecil Taylor, Archie
Shepp, John Tchicai, Don Cherry and longtime collaborator Steve Lacy. In more
recent times, the ever-adventurous Rudd has collaborated with Malian musicians
(2001's MALIcool), traditional Mongolian musicians (2005's Blue Mongol) and
Latin musicians (2007's El Espiritu Jibaro). He gathered nine of the greatest
trombonists on the scene, along with the Gangue Brass Band of Benin, for 2009's
Trombone Tribe and in 2016 he debuted on RareNoiseRecords with the audacious
improvised outing Strength & Power. His latest for the label may be his
most inspired and affecting outing to date.
A tribute to the master trombonist is scheduled for November
16 and will be held at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club. Friends and
collaborators will celebrate this outstanding musician, who was diagnosed with
stage 4 cancer in 2013. Roswell is unable to play right now but hopes to be
strong enough to attend this glorious musical event. For further info, please
visit http://www.jazz.org/dizzys/
TRACKS
1. Something To Live For
2. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
3. Can't We Be Friends
4. I Hadn't Anyone Till You
5. Too Late Now
6. House Of The Rising Sun
7. I Look In The Mirror
8. Pannonica
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