Steph Richards | "Power Vibe"

Steph Richards has already made quite a name for herself in the worlds of avant garde music and creative jazz. She has recorded for Relative Pitch, Pi Recordings, Tzadik Records, Cantaloupe Records, Northern Spy Records, and more and worked with Laurie Anderson, Anthony Braxton, Ravi Coltrane and Henry Threadgill. Richards worked for years as co-producer of the FONT Music Festival, alongside fellow trumpeter Dave Douglas. Her records have been praised for displaying her evident virtuosity and inventiveness, the New York Times calling Richards “boldly inventive.” NPR’s Nate Chinen says Richards is “ingenious” and Downbeat insists that she is “the latest figure of note” in jazz and “a virtuoso of nonlinear trumpet playing.” All About Jazz cuts to the chase, saying simply, that Richards “kicks ass.” 

It’s an impressive history and litany of praise for a young trumpeter, but with her latest full-length for Northern Spy, Power Vibe, Richards pushes even further, marrying avant garde and cinematic moods with a kind of infectious and patently pleasing tunefulness. The addition of “sensory electronics” –– subtle but compelling textures and tactile rhythms which are physically triggered by drum-mounted sensors –– compels fascination here, interweaving a kind of aural hyper-lucidity throughout the record. Though boldly original, this music strides surefootedly alongside the work of contemporaries like Nicole Mitchell and the late jaimie branch. 

And Power Vibe is just as fascinating conceptually as it is aesthetically. The record –– as well as the eponymously named quartet –– is built around a series of musical cues that, when played, redirect all the players to move into a new structure. The trick is that any of the players can play one of these cues at any time, ensuring that the music unfolds in an even more radically democratic way than in totally open-ended improvised music performance. One might think of this as the “power vibe”: the power to redirect the entire band lies in the hands of each player, equally. It’s a cogent redistribution of power, one that Richards and the band clearly revel in, and it gives the music a sense of open structural possibility. 

But one might think of the power vibe as stemming from something else, something much more personal. About a year ahead of recording Power Vibe, Richards began to experience serious complications with her physical ability to play. Richards explains that she met threatening signs of muscular collapse, even terrifying hints of potential focal dystonia, a neurological condition that causes muscular freezing. As Richards puts it, “I had exhausted my setup and I had to hit the shed and fully remake my face.” Months of rigorous retraining, researching new techniques and studying with different teachers across the country led Richards to develop even stronger technical abilities than before the fatigue and collapse. “This record’s really important to me,” Richards says, “because it was my first time understanding this new face, this new technical ability and technique. It was a scary journey to get to that point, and it was a joy to overcome it. I can hear that joy in this music.” This, clearly, is another way in which Power Vibe lives up to its name: that joy in the power to play, at all, let alone with the level of skill that Richards wields, is evident in the sound.  

While Richards’ virtuosity and boundless creativity is clearly on display here, pianist Joshua White, whose playing sometimes veers into McCoy Tyner rapture, and drummers Gerald Cleaver and Max Jaffe do more than simply support. Again, there is a sense of commitment and soulfulness that is bolstered by the redistribution of power. And Stomu Takeishi’s acoustic and electric bass guitar playing helps to push these tunes headlong into realms of groove and infectious kinesis that make it what it is: remarkable. Certainly fans of Ron Miles’ or Wadada Leo Smith’s or Don Cherry’s adventurous and joyful playing and collaborating will find much to love in this work. But the vibe here belongs to Steph Richards.