If you are unfamiliar with vocalist Catherine Russell, do yourself a big favor and check out her latest release, Send for Me, available here. If you are familiar with her, you have probably stopped reading by now and are on your way to to pick up this stellar release, if you haven’t already.
The bio of bassist/composer Mike Rivard, the head elf of the band Club d’Elf, claims that he is “perhaps the only musician to have performed with big band legend Cab Calloway, Frank Zappa discovery Wild Man Fisher, Gnawa master Hassan Hakmoun and two members of the Velvet Underground (though sadly, not all at the same time)” [my emphasis]. With Club d’Elf, though, Rivard performs with musicians from a similarly wide range of backgrounds—from traditional Moroccan music to ’60s rock, jazz to country to Hindustani music—all at the same time, playing originals, Gnawa and Sufi classics, and covers of folks such as Zappa and Zawinul/Davis. The result is transformational music that can lighten your load.
In his capacity as a faculty member of The Hartt School and director of its Jackie McClean Institute of Jazz at the University of Hartford, saxophonist Javon Jackson invited activist, educator, and poet Nikki Giovanni to speak to students in February 2020. When she’d finished her talk, she heard Steal Away, the Hank Jones/Charlie Haden album of hymns and spirituals, one of this household’s favorites, playing in the auditorium. She wanted to hear more of it, which gave Jackson the idea to do an album of hymns and spirituals. He asked Giovanni to select 10 tunes, and she sent him the selections a few days later. The result is The Gospel according to Nikki Giovanni, whose healing powers testify to the songs’ enduring capacity to refresh the soul.
I first encountered French saxophonist Émile Parisien on an album titled XXXX (ACT), released last year. (I’m a little late to the party—OK, very late, since Parisien has recordings going back as far as 2014 at least.) XXXX is an impressive live recording—five stars in Downbeat—from the quartet of Michael Wollney, Parisien, Tim Lefebre, and Christian Lillinger, but the high level of anxiety it induced in me might keep it out of my CD player for a while. I did, however, take note of Parisien, whose musicality and humanity stood out across every track, whatever the mood or tempo. A name to remember, I thought, and then his latest recording, Louise, appeared in my post box. It confirmed my first impression—in spades.
For many people, music that is “freely improvised” is about as welcome as a root canal procedure. Not surprising really, since much of what has been labeled that way is self-indulgent and often cacophonous bloviation. In hands of disciplined and connected musicians, however, freely improvised—or as Carol Tristano likes to call it, intuitively improvised—music has the coherence of anything written on paper, with an extra frisson of unpredictability. Exhibit 1: Blue Shift, from the trio In Real Time (Carol Liebowitz, piano; Adam Lane, bass; and Andrew Drury, drums).