Latest releases reviewed
VANGUARD JAZZ ORCHESTRA Up from the Skies: Music of Jim McNeely Planet Arts *****
This marvellous album takes the relationship of composer and pianist McNeely and the VJO to another level, with the band's consummate perfection the launching pad for some of McNeely's finest writing. He's a master orchestrator, cosseting, encouraging and challenging his soloists, filling the charts with detail and colour that constantly delight and surprise, yet neither obscure the unfolding musical discourse nor blunt its momentum. And what soloists: Dick Oatts's alto and Greg Gisbert's flugelhorn on Hardly Ever and Scott Wendholt's trumpet on In This Moment are lyricism personified, while Rich Perry (tenor) and Gary Smulyan (baritone) on the moving, dignified We Will Not Be Silenced are just a few examples of McNeely's ability to dialogue superbly with the VJO's classy musical personalities. Essential. www.PlanetArts.org
Ray Comiskey
SUSANNE ABBUEHL Compass ECM ****
Susanne Abbuehl is a Swiss-Dutch singer, lyricist and composer with a uniquely intimate, conversational style. Here, besides her own originals, she has devised settings from Joyce's Finnegans Wake and Chamber Music, arranged pieces from Luciano Berio's Folk Songs, added lyrics to Chick Corea and Sun Ra compositions, and put music to poems by William Carlos Williams and China's Ming Dynasty Feng Meng-Lung. The spare, lovely environment, with Wolfert Brederode (piano), Christof May (clarinets), Lucas Niggli (drums/percussion), and Michel Portal (clarinet) guesting on two, offers no place to hide. Deceptively simple and oddly compelling despite a reticence which sometimes leads to indistinctness, the results reveal a sensual, melancholy artist, intellectually curious and acutely sensitive to words. An acquired taste, perhaps, but a rewarding one. www.musicconnection.org.uk
Ray Comiskey
JAMIE STEWARDSON Jhaptal Fresh Sound New Talent ****
Stewardson is an excellent young guitarist and even better composer. On this, his second album, he leads an exceptional quintet in Tony Malaby (tenor), Alexei Tsiganov (vibes), John Hebert (bass) and George Schuller (drums) through nine of his compositions, embracing inter alia serialism, Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, Indian rhythms and (so the sleeve says) Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Schoenberg. If that sounds like the rattling of intellectual loose change, the music isn't. Malaby, so original a player, and Tsiganov are particularly inspired by Stewardson's adventurous writing, the guitarist is not far behind them and, with Hebert and Schuller providing a magnificent foundation, the music is vibrantly alive and several notches above the pack. www.freshsoundrecords.com
Ray Comiskey
