Ilhan Ersahin’s Istanbul Sessions Night Rider (Nublu)
By David R. Adler
As founder of the club Nublu, tenor saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin has had a notable impact on live music in New York, increasing the creative traffic between jazz improvisers, beatmakers, world music bands and avant-gardists of all stripes. Ersahin’s reach also extends to Istanbul and the nightspot Nublu Istanbul@Babylon, where jazz and club music come into contact with the sounds of Turkey and the surrounding region. The quartet project Istanbul Sessions is solidly representative of these efforts. It features the leader with Alp Ersönmez on electric bass, Izzet Kizil on percussion and Turgut Alp Bekoğlu on drums.
Ersahin has a rich and full tenor tone and good instincts as a soloist, but he’s not pushing to be the sole focus of these nine tracks. He plays through a variety of electronic effects, distorting and manipulating his sound and rendering the horn as an element in a sonic mosaic. Thanks to smart post-production and mixing, each instrument yields unexpected sounds, different ones on nearly every track. Yet the group’s previous effort, Istanbul Sessions with Erik Truffaz, featuring the renowned “nu-jazz” trumpeter, had a more alluring tonal and harmonic palette, and stronger compositions.
At a tight 40 minutes, however, Night Rider is a good listen, with vibrant beats and subtle interlocking patterns from Bekoğlu on full kit, punctuated by Kizil’s dumbek and frame drums. Ersönmez combines low bass lines with a more guitaristic and polyphonic approach, overdubbing a slick wah-wah part on the opening “Etnik” and starting his own composition “Gece Inerken” (“night descending”) with beautiful rubato fingerstyle passages. “One Zero” growls with distortion, while “Hadi Gel Artik” skips along with poppy syncopation and “Huzur” (“peace”) sounds like spacey but energized indie-rock. Is it Turkish? Somehow, yes, but this is music that wears its cosmopolitanism on its sleeve.
On releases such as Orange Blossom, Herculaneum III and Olives and Orchids, the Chicago sextet Herculaneum fashioned a sound full of urgent, percolating rhythm and well-placed dissonance — a horn-heavy aesthetic with echoes of Blue Note’s ’60s avant-garde wing. Their newest, UCHŪ, is true to form, with eight concise tracks held together by the powerful work of bassist Greg Danek and drummer Dylan Ryan.
While the Herculaneum lineup — four horns and rhythm section — remains big and compelling, UCHŪ lacks some of the timbral variation of the band’s earlier efforts. One misses the crisp guitar of John Beard and the occasional vibraphone of Ryan, which gave the group a moody chamber-jazz dimension. And yet other changes are afoot: for the first time, alto saxophonist David McDonnell, tenor saxophone/flutist Nate Lepine and trumpeter Patrick Newbery weigh in with original compositions (Ryan is normally the band’s sole composer).
“Dragon’s Office,” by McDonnell, starts the album in a springy 5/4, with snaky trombone/tenor unisons expanding into four-part voicings, lush yet wonderfully acidic. Danek bows the bass on the heavily African groove of “Elmyr” to mimic the squeaking percussion of a guica. On both these cuts McDonnell takes charge as a soloist; he returns with Dolphy-esque fire on Ryan’s “Little Murders” and Newbery’s heavy metal closer “Rumors.” Lepine’s tenor solos on “Chianti” and “Fern” also have a satisfying balance of logic and intensity. Broste’s moment comes on “Age of Iron,” a slow-swinging line by McDonnell, ideal for the lonely trombone rumination that continues as the track fades away.
Lepine’s “Fern” is the standout: unhurried, insistently grooving, with a thick harmonized horn passage that bookends the piece. Bass and drums play along the first time through, but in the final 30 seconds it’s the horns alone, laying bare the counterpoint’s nasty inner workings.
In a cheerful and loquacious introduction at Bar Next Door (Dec. 4), guitarist Peter Mazza announced his plan for the evening: arrangements of standards, reflecting a passion for rich and intricate harmony. Flanked by Marco Panascia on upright bass and Roggerio Boccato on a scaled-down percussion kit, Mazza quickly made clear that he is indeed a chord-hound. His treatments of “Skylark,” “Over the Rainbow,” “Someday My Prince Will Come,” “My Romance,” “Darn That Dream” and “Stella By Starlight” were packed with capricious chord-melody voicings, darting counterlines and written bass parts that Mazza and Panascia often played in unison. Even if the potential for guitar/bass muddiness was there, the sound remained light and nimble. Boccato saw to that with his dumbek, woodblocks and other accessories, which still allowed for a solid jazz feel on ride cymbal and brushes. Mazza got a clear and tailored sound from a Gibson archtop and played to Boccato’s strengths with Brazilian-inspired rhythms, waltzes and other spacious feels. The single-note solo passages were inventive, sparking empathic trio interplay, but ultimately Mazza’s pianistic block chords and bold contrapuntal devices were the most consistently absorbing part of this music. Never did his arrangements detract from the original melodies, or even the underlying harmonic logic that made these songs great. On “Stella,” the tour de force closer, one heard extravagance, but also simple good taste. (David R. Adler)
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Bassist Michael Bates, in a well-deserved showcase at Ibeam (Dec. 10), took charge with two contrasting yet intimately related lineups. He began with music from the new album Acrobat, performed by most of the original in-studio cast: Chris Speed on reeds, Russ Johnson on trumpet, Russ Lossing on piano/Wurlitzer and Jeff Davis (standing in for Tom Rainey) on drums. In a welcome twist, trombonist Samuel Blaser joined the Acrobat group as well (he also partnered with Bates as a co-leader in the second set, debuting a new quintet with tenor powerhouse Michael Blake). The Acrobat music, all inspired by or adapted from Shostakovich, rose to new imaginative heights with the third horn. Leading off with the Intermezzo from the Piano Quintet in G Minor, Speed played slow and high-pitched clarinet, summoning the lonely quality of the original violin line. Finishing with the Allegretto movement of the Piano Trio No. 2, the band dug in with a grinding beat and captured the work’s deep inner tension — its Russian-ness, if you will. Bates’ originals were full of improvised fire and sonic flux, with Lossing’s tweaked Wurlitzer adding jolts of electric post-fusion on “Silent Witness” and the uptempo “Strong Arm.” Johnson’s unaccompanied solo with mute on “Talking Bird,” hushed in volume yet full of unbridled urgency, was a thing of wonder. From the brash “Fugitive Pieces” to the legato balladry of “Some Wounds,” the music was unsettled, precise and poignantly lyrical all at once. (DA)
Inevitably, a firestorm erupted on Twitter and Facebook after trumpeter Nicholas Payton published this post, titled “On Why Jazz Isn’t Cool Anymore.” And then this follow-up, “An Open Letter To My Dissenters.”
In the second post Payton writes, “‘Jazz’ is an oppressive colonialist slave term and I want no parts [sic] of it.” This sounds similar to Fred Ho’s assessment: “I don’t use the term ‘jazz’ because I consider it a racial slur. Professor Archie Shepp from UMass Amherst asserts and I agree with him, that the word jazz comes from the French verb jaser, which means to chatter nonsensically or gibberish. So from the very beginning, its classification was a form of debasement.”
And yet the etymology of “jazz” is far more ambiguous than these statements suggest. Historian Lewis Porter has a helpful blog post here, and his book Jazz: A Century of Change contains a chapter on the topic, from which I quote:
“None of the linguistic theories about jazz has been proven — not the theories that relate it to African words, or the one that relates it to the French word jaser (to chatter), or the one that relates it to the slang word gism, which meant ‘enthusiasm’ but also may have meant ‘semen.’ All of the derivations from foreign languages are speculative because they are purely based on the sound of the word, and etymologies based on sound alone are notoriously unreliable.”
Fred Ho, following Archie Shepp, puts forward the jaser argument as if it were established fact. It is anything but. The truth is that no one knows precisely how the word “jazz” came to be applied to music.
The musical term “jazz” was widely in use by 1918. Needless to say, many years have passed. Whatever negative or possibly racist connotations that came with the word have surely been overtaken and decisively buried. Meanings change. As Lewis Porter observes in his book John Coltrane: His Life and Music, the surname “Coltrane” is actually an inheritance from slaveholders. And yet now, the word “Coltrane” could not be more African-American.
I won’t get into Payton’s many other assertions, some of which have to do with jazz cutting itself off from popular music — a very complex and valid subject to explore. I would, however, like to print another comment from Payton, which was on the record but did not make it into my recent JazzTimes feature [pdf]. It was back in July that Payton told me:
My issue has become that a lot of jazz today doesn’t swing, doesn’t feel good, doesn’t have a blues sensibility, it’s just become this word that has been bastardized and able to be used for things to me that don’t represent the best of what this music is. So I’ve just sort of distanced myself from the word because it’s come to carry a negative connotation. People say jazz, that music where cats stand up onstage and play solo after solo of self-indulgent, self-important stuff – that’s really not what I feel the music is supposed to be about.
Also it’s become acceptable in jazz, if there aren’t too many people in the club it’s cool, if the music alienates listeners it’s cool, if it’s above their heads — this whole elitist attitude that has served to the music’s detriment.
[...]
The music has gotten far too much away from itself – so to me, if that is jazz, then you guys can have it. I want to do something else.
To close, I will quote the epigraph to Horace Silver’s website: “I have been blessed to walk among and perform with some of the great geniuses of this music we so lovingly call jazz [my emphasis]. I hope that I may inspire some of the youth of today, as these musicians inspired and still do inspire me.”
If Horace Silver is using the word “jazz,” and even doing so “lovingly,” then I really have nothing to add.
There was much to digest while watching Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society perform “Brooklyn Babylon,” an hourlong work programmed by BAM’s Next Wave Festival (Nov. 10). Danijel Zezelj, standing on a catwalk, painted haunting images in black and red, using a small roller on a wide and narrow canvas as Argue’s music roared. When Zezelj wasn’t visible, his bleak-as-hell urban animation sequences were projected on a large screen. In time a fictional storyline emerged: immigrant Lev Bezdomni is contracted to build a carousel on top of the 3,000-foot-plus Tower of Brooklyn. Apart from some too-obvious symbolism at the end, the political message was present without being overbearing. Argue brought out some of his most compelling music to date, with a palette both more subtle and expansive than that of his acclaimed debut Infernal Machines. Passages of great delicacy — piano-clarinet duets, flute chorales, unaccompanied nylon-string guitar — alternated with moments of slashing fury and awesome full-ensemble precision. The staging, too, was beautiful, a counterpoint to Zezelj’s aesthetic of the grim. Musicians entered from various places, cued by a low-brass quartet down on the floor. The band wore dull overalls and caps for an early 20th-century working-class effect, and stood arrayed in a circle with the rhythm section at the center. Somehow by disassembling the conventional big band in this way, Argue brought it more together than ever. (David R. Adler)
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What a feat: combining four motley instruments, without drums, and honing a sound so endlessly and precisely rhythmic. Ten years as a working band will do that. The Four Bags returned to Barbès (Nov. 6), where they made 2006’s Live at Barbès, and focused on material from their new recording Forth. Clarinetist Michael McGinnis emceed the two sets, offering up song titles and witticisms. But musically, the spotlight was on everyone: Brian Drye on trombone, Sean Moran on electric guitar and Jacob Garchik (widely known as a trombonist) on accordion. Garchik’s opener, “Wayne Shorter’s Tune With All Different Notes,” put funky rhythmic cohesion atop the agenda. But the repertoire spanned genres and cultures, from Brazil (“Gírias do Norte”) to Iran (“The Burning”), from electronic pop (“Run,” by Air) to French musette (“La Valse des As”) to upbeat gospel (“G is for Geezus”) to metal (“Pope Joy,” featuring Moran’s baritone guitar). Two McGinnis originals were especially strong: the folky “Sweet Home California” relied on Moran’s impeccable 9/8 strumming, while “Comfort Toon” evoked a bittersweet midtempo jazz mood. Moran’s “Tip Top” and “Terpsichore,” as well as Drye’s “Imaginary Soda,” lent an air of staccato agitation to the night. A playful spirit reigned, but the Four Bags never devolve into slapstick for its own sake. They’ve put in work on their intricate parts, clean endings and alert communication, bringing disparate influences into natural harmony. (DA)
Ilhan Ersahin’s Istanbul Sessions
