Russ Lossing: Moon Inhabitants (Sunnyside Records SSC1752)
New York City based American pianist and composer Russ Lossing has a singular musical vision that makes him a musician’s musician. That means that he is not a populist, and remains little-known beyond his coterie of admirers. Maybe he’d agree with Jim Hall, that if someone had asked him to sell out, he would have – but I think that like Hall, he’s an ironist. You have to be to make a living in our cultural world, without selling out. His latest release balances structure and freedom in the manner of the finest artists.
Lossing’s trio features bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Billy Mintz – the latter I know well, through his partnership with Alan Broadbent, but I’m less familiar with Kamaguchi. The trio has been together for 25 years. They explore what Lossing calls “almost strict time”, playing around the beat on the model of Paul Bley’s trio with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian. Lossing played with Motian over a period of 12 years and was a member of his quintet.
The result, as with Bley, is a mix of jazz and free improv. Amazingly, this is only the trio’s fourth recording – following two for Hat Hut (Ways and Oracle) and one for Sunnyside (Motian Music, a tribute to the compositions of Paul Motian). Moon Inhabitants features originals plus interpretations of jazz and classical compositions. Under the heading of jazz are two Ornette Coleman compositions, the frenetic title track and a joyful interpretation of his early composition Jayne. The latter more relaxed uptempo swing is a clearer example of Lossing’s “almost strict time”.
The rubato melody of Tchaikovsky’s Dance Of The Little Swans opens miraculously, and remains hard to recognise. This haunting piece, at a very slow rubato, becomes a very free improvisation. Harold Arlen’s Last Night When We Were Young gets a gorgeous interpretation that follows a similar very slow pattern. A magical album by a great jazz pianist.
Sophie Agnel & Michael Zerang: Draw Bridge (Relative Pitch Records RPR1197)
French pianist Sophie Agnel is a name new to me – but she shouldn’t be. She’s been on the improv scene for many years, producing work as an improviser of the highest quality. She’s a master at preparation and playing inside the piano – as one reviewer comments eloquently, she’s “equally adept at producing gamelan-like bell tones, cavernous detonations and massed blurs of damped-string sound that bypass conventional tuning”. She has a sharply individual signature style with a distinctive vocabulary.
This all makes her an ideal partner for Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang. He’s one of the great free drummers, whom I recall hearing with Ken Vandermark and others. From discussing the music with him, it’s clear that’s he’s a very insightful commentator on it. The Relative Pitch release, like many albums on the label, is at the more radical and non-jazz end of free improv, but the results are exciting and not austere. Agnel and Zerang produce a supreme artistic rationalism, combined with affecting emotional expression, and an almost orchestral sound-palette.
There’s a wide range of soundworlds and emotional expression, with play predominating over angst. Vertical Lift is a slow, eerie exploration, mostly gentle and plangent but with sudden, unexpected outbursts. Towards the end, the performance gets more strident. Swing Point is equally slow but more astringent. Integral has frenetic moments, and is generally abrasive. The album was recorded live at Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, during a recent edition of The Bridge, a long-running Franco-American collaboration. Both musicians are masters of their art, and though this music will never be exactly popular, it will continue to gain adherents.
Coo: Spiccilegia (Tonkunst Manufaktur LC77691)
Coo are a quartet of Berlin-based avant-gardists: Kai Winter (alto saxophone), Peter Czekay (trumpet), Frau Sportman (bass, live electronics, toys) and Sanjuro (drums). The splendid Spiccilegia is the debut of this chordless ensemble. The 16 tracks vary in length from 11 seconds to 4.27 – an unusual format. The result is some wholly involving and compelling free improv.
Much of it is groove-based and entertaining – what John Stevens called freebop. That makes it rather less avant-garde, more jazzy, and more playful in general, than the Angle/Zerang release above. Both albums are excellent, but jazz fans will appreciate Spiccilegia more than Draw Bridge. There are extended techniques here, but they draw on jazz more than contemporary composition. Winter’s turkey-gobbling saxophone and Czekay’s vocalised trumpet are examples.
Among the brief tracks is the zany ezaparts, played on what sounds like a plastic harmonica and the mournful trumpet solo instabilis (all titles are lowercase). coomotion is a pun on commotion and co-motion, with drum and horns. The result is an engrossing, lively and often comic recording of high quality.
