This week's Jazz CDs reviewed
GEIR LYSNE
The Grieg Code ACT★★★★★
Gil Evans may be your first thought on hearing this absorbingly lovely album. Using fragments from Edvard Grieg’s works as the basisof big band compositions, Lysne develops them into ever-morphing soundscapes as deftly as Evans might have; some even recall Evans’s floating, haunting sonorities. But Lysne’s scoring, with jew’s harp and voice in the ensemble, is different, and he seems by nature more of a long-form composer. And, though he borrows motivic ideas from Grieg, the way he develops them for this splendid 12-piece ensemble is individual, inventive and clearly jazz. He has also pulled off a particularly difficult feat: an array of strong, distinctive soloists, among them Jesper Riis, Arkady Shilkloper, Lars A Haug and Tore Brunborg,
are “persuaded” musically to serve the needs of these atmospheric compositions before anything else. This music is his. www.actmusic. com
FRANCESCO TURRISI
Si Dolce è il Tormento Diatribe★★★★
The core of this exquisite CD, which combines Turrisi's experience of 17th-century Italian music with jazz, is the trio of Turrisi (piano), Dan Bodwell (bass) and Seán Carpio (drums). Their performances of Salve Regina, Ciaccona, Lamento di Paolo e Francesca, Canzonetta Spirituale sopra la Nannaand La Monicaare full of interplay that, even at its most flexible and imaginative, serves the music. Carpio is a subtle colourist, Bodwell combines solidity and mobility, and Turrisi, who composed most of the material, is in gorgeous form. His solo Toccatais a bonus. Brendan Doyle (clarinet/bass clarinet) and Richard Sweeney (theorbo, an early lute) appear on some tracks (the clarinet on the long, adventurous Variazioni sopra la Folliais disturbingly flat), but the album is really about this particularly striking trio.www.diatribe.ie
MARTIAL SOLAL
Live at the Village Vanguard CamJazz★★★
Solal's week-long 2007 solo piano stint in New York showed that, at 80, his wit, brilliance, almost boundless resourcefulness and technical command were stunning. Art Tatum is one reference point, even to the occasional touches of modified stride, though Solal makes greater use of rubato and seems to find an opportunity for a musical joke hard to resist. And there's the rub. The material, mostly standards with a couple of originals, is frequently mocked, albeit in the most sophisticated manner. It exists only as an arena for the play of fantasy and is made to don a myriad of harmonic and rhythmic clothes, with splashes of wry humour. For all the creativity lavished on Lover Manor I Can't Give You Anything But Love(even 'Round Midnightis put through the harmonic/rhythmic wringer in this way), you get a sense that, behind the dazzle, it's just a game. www.CamJazz.com
