Orrin Evans’ Captain Black Big Band, Mother’s Touch: Excellent big band release, and the first studio album by Evans’ Captain Black Big Band. Boisterous, almost mad with enthusiasm at times between the solos and group efforts, there’s plenty of huge sounds and expansive views. But the most amazing quality of this album is when Evans scales things down for quiet interludes on piano. One would expect that in the aftermath of the big band’s full-on assault, Evans would sound tiny and brittle… and yet he is no less evocative than when the big band slams its foot down on the gas pedal. That’s the kind of resonance that Evans brings to the table, and it’s why if you see his name on any particular recording, you should pretty much just scoop it up. This strong album ends on a strong note with “Prayer for Columbine.” Recommended.
Category: Reviews
ICON’s Nick Bewsey makes Orrin Evans “Mother’s Touch” one of his picks for the month…
http://wrti.org/post/may-jazz-picks-icon-magazine
Orrin Evans’ Captain Black Big Band: Mother’s Touch: Posi-tone – Orrin Evans is a true jazz advocate. One of the busiest leaders on the scene with more than 20 solo albums in his discography along with countless sideman appearances, Evans has a second-to-none work ethic in and around New York as well as his hometown of Philadelphia. An industrious musician with an impetuous streak (despite recognizing the economies of scale, he stated that he “can’t stand the trio format” in a July 2012 Village Voice interview), Evans thinks bigger, refusing to see limitations in presenting jazz or performing it. Pairing once again with Posi-Tone Records, Evans’ sophomore studio recording of his Captain Black Big Band is a particularly satisfying album that challenges the status quo. Leading a big band within today’s economic realities seems to defy reason, but Mother’s Touch marks a magnificent return of the CBBB and it scores in every way imaginable.
The album maintains swing at its core, a kind of groove-oriented center that gives it ballast and flow. Evans uses horns as the band’s primary voice, but closer listening reveals that as the primary composer, the pianist takes advantage of a larger canvas to create earthy textures and a spectrum of brassy color. Threading a groove throughout, the recording is reminiscent of the big band recordings of McCoy Tyner—there’s a cinematic thrill in the way that the rhythm section pairs with the horns. Evans, bassist Luques Curtis and drummer Anwar Marshall keep the music pulsating underneath surefire solos by Stacy Dillard and Marcus Strickland on both parts of the title track and again with tenorist Victor North on the gorgeous “Maestra.” First-rate drummer Ralph Peterson guests on “Explain It To Me,” a track with a swinging, churchy feel. Wholly modern and accessible, Mother’s Touch is among Evans’ finest recorded work. He maintains a decisive point of view (the tricky scales on “Prayer For Columbine” give it a meaningful heft) and that consistency makes Evans’ Captain Black Big Band the perfect introduction to his music.
AAJ’s Glenn Astarita reviews Ralph Bowen “Standard Deviation”…
Ralph Bowen: Standard Deviation (2014)
Track review of “Yesterdays”
Tenor saxophonist Ralph Bowen (Out Of The Blue, Horace Silver, Michel Camillo) is a highly regarded New York-based artiste and an idea man who can stand with the best of them. With his fifth solo venture for Posi- Tone Records Bowen tackles standards, and as the title intimates, he often deviates from the norm.
Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays” receives a Latin uplift, sparked by venerable pianist Bill O’Connell‘s topsy-turvy opening statements and bristling unison choruses with the rhythm section. From this point onward, they spring into a buoyant romp as Bowen stokes the coals via a ferocious series of choruses. He adds enough bite to impart a distinct edge, yet interweaves his melodic flair into ultra-fluid lines and improvises within the lower to medium registers. But he doesn’t waste any notes and injects a few emphatic honks and squeaks into the upper-registers to raise the pitch with a stirring climatic assault while also infusing brevity into O’ Connell’s flavorful arrangement. Ultimately, Bowen and his first-class ensemble ruffle a few feathers and take matters into their own hands by not tendering literal readings of these rather shopworn works. (Zealously recommended…)
Track Listing: Isn’t It Romantic; No Moon At All, Yesterdays; You Don’t Know What Love Is; You Stepped Out Of A Dream; Spring Is Here; Dream Dancing; By Myself
Personnel: Ralph Bowen: tenor saxophone; Bill O’Connell: piano; Kenny Davis: bass; Donald Edwards: drums.
Midwest Record on “Mother’s Touch”…
http://midwestrecord.com/MWR802.html
ORRIN EVANS’ CAPTAIN BLACK BIG BAND/Mother’s Touch: Right from the opening, this feels like a classic big band set. He might be a piano man, but he’s got the arranger’s chops of instrumentalists from other axes from the last 50 years of greats. Starting out by sort of taking it to church, Evans and his vast collection of players knock it right out of the park. Brimming over and dripping with great talent, it might be impractical to take this on the road these days, but any corporations that want to walk it like they talk it could at least trot them out during festival season with some sponsorship. Utterly great listening that will sorely remind you how they don’t make them like this anymore—-and they should. Hats off to Evans for his wonderful originals and wonderful originality.
Ralph Bowen is on WBGO’s radar….
Saxophonist Ralph Bowen has made his mark on the New York jazz scene for over three decades with what he calls “casual perfectionism.”
He’s been documented on over 70 recordings, including those with Horace Silver, Kenny Garrett, Renee Rosnes, Michel Camilo and Steve Wilson. Bowen has appeared with Art Blakey, Michael Brecker, Ron Carter, Kenny Barron and Gary Bartz, among others of note.
For Standard Deviation, Bowen’s fifth release for The Posi-Tone label, Ralph comes together in a powerful quartet setting with pianist Bill O’Connell, bassist Kenny Davis and drummer Donald Edwards to reinvent eight standards to their liking.
Richard Rodgers’ “Isn’t It Romantic” and Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays” show a tenor saxophonist at the top of his abilities, setting standards on edge, exploring all the possibilities this kind of experience affords.
This group has a comfort with one another giving familiarity a new face; a new energy possible, as you’ll hear on “Yesterdays”, one of two tunes arranged for this date by pianist O’Connell. Bowen’s lines explore to where this one could very well be renamed “Todays.”
The plaintive posture of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” has that casual perfection Ralph subscribes to as comfortable as a late night listen with a special someone you might be wondering about, with hints of a Dexter Gordon last set with Kenny Drew at Cafe Monmartre.
“You Stepped Out Of A Dream,” the other tune arranged by the pianist, sets a course for these four to realize a dream of their own, stating the theme, then exploring all possibilities lesser experience can only dream about.
Bowen’s arrangement of another Richard Rodgers gem, “Spring Is Here,” is a perfect springboard for O’Connell, Davis and Edwards to show their striking synergy, with the leader seasoning this one for a fresh encounter.
Some Cole Porter is in order next with “Dream Dancing,” where Ralph’ s tenor speaks new volumes, urged to dance by the trio’s call and response.
“By Myself” closes the date at a furious pace, with four as one, making us realize that everything old is indeed new again. The energy here makes us all wish we had picked up an instrument years back.
On the inside sleeve of this record, Frank Zappa is quoted as saying, “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
For Ralph Bowen and his musical friends, the deviation is anything but standard. Rather, the listener is awash in the true essence of the jazz performance – making great music together in the moment. The time here has countless moments well spent.
Ralph Bowen’s Standard Deviation comes out May 20th.
Gary Walker, WBGO music director
Another nice piece on David Ake “Bridges”….
David Ake. Bridges.
Posi-Tone, 2013.
There’s a new jazz guy in town. He’s not really new, but he’s got a job here now, so that makes him ours (“gooble gobble, one of us”), whether he wants to be considered a Northeast Ohio artist or not. David Ake is the relatively new Chair of the Department of Music at Case Western Reserve University, having relocated from the University of Nevada, and before that, California. He’s put out a half-dozen jazz albums, has authored or edited three books on the subject, and is trained as a musicologist. I didn’t really notice that I had heard his work before looking him up, but he did an album with the trio EEA back in 2010 that I picked up somewhere, and liked a lot. I thought I’d give this new one a try.
Here, the pianist has put together a stellar sextet. It’s sort of odd that he is one of the less well-known member of the group. These guys are all major players, and many have worked together on other projects (Alessi and Coltrane, Colley and Epstein), so it seems Ake is well-respected outside of academic circles. If I had to characterize the music, I don’t think I would. There’s too much variation–some postbop, some minimalism, some avant-garde, and even a touch of New Orleans now and then. This makes it hard to pigeonhole, which is probably the point.
The title tracks starts off as a minimalist mixing up of instruments on a simple theme that reminds me of a traffic jam, with its insistent horn repetition; deceptively simple. Ralph Alessi takes off on “Sonomads,” a lovely, balanced composition that, while still exhibiting some of the minimalist approach of the first track, takes off in a different direction, with the Ake and the rhythm section taking much of the foreground, and the entire group sounding like a big band at the end. Epstein comes out front for “Story Table,” with some fiery sax work in a post-bop mode. The interplay among the two saxophonists and Alessi is really grand throughout. “We Do?” gets weird, moving from a bop beginning, picking up some Ornette Coleman-like stuff along the way, then moving back to bop for the finale. Colley’s bass solo is sweet. Ake’s melodic piano is out front for “Boats (exit),” with the horns sounding like a flock of Canada geese in the background, getting closer. The nearly nine minute workout of “Year in Review” displays the talents of everyone, but I was especially taken by Alessi’s playing here, as well as Ake’s elaborate piano. The other long piece is “Dodge,” which makes the sextet sound like a tight big band again, with excellent work by Coltrane. It gets a bit far out in the middle, but comes back home, seemingly an exercise in order and chaos. The more relaxed “Grand Colonial” precedes the closer, “Light Bright,” which acts as a bookend to the opener, seemingly simple, but maybe not so much as one delves in.
I hear a theme to the album, one that explores the relationships between structure and anti-structure, with some compositions in one camp, and some veering wildly between the two. Ake’s piano and the rhythm section hold it all together. This makes for considerable eclecticism, but the fine musicians Ake is working with are up to the task, and the result is a worthwhile album.
Personnel: David Ake (piano, composer), Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Scott Colley (bass), Ravi Coltrane (tenor sax), Peter Epstein (alto sax), Mark Ferber (drums).
Tracks: Bridges, Sonomads, Waterfront, Story Table, We Do?, Boats (exit), Year in Review, Open/Balance, Dodge, Grand Colonial, Light Bright.
Jeff Wanser
Another review for Ralph Bowen’s new release…
RALPH BOWEN/Standard Deviation: Here’s an experiment that really works well. Sax man Bowen tackles the standards, one generally presented in mellow tones, but he changes things up and gives them a hard edge. Solidly swinging post-bop, Bowen and his crew get inside the music and find things generally never brought out on these tunes except in church basements, if at all. Hard hitting stuff that’s easy to take, sax fans will really dig the way he and his crew kick it out here. Well done.
SomethingElse Reviews Ralph Bowen’s new release “Standard Deviation”…
Tenor saxophone ace Ralph Bowen had been such a non-stop record-making machine since he signed up withPosi-Tone Records around 2009, but he spent 2013 catching his breath, so to speak. And now, he returns with his fifth release for the label, Standard Deviation (out May 13).
Returning to the usual acoustic quartet format following his organ jazz encounter with Jared Gold (Total Eclipse, 2012), Bowen tears through a set of standards composed by all the usual suspects — Rodgers, Kern and Porter — with verve and heaping helpings of swing. Helping him out are Bill O’Connell (piano), Kenny Davis (bass) and Donald Edwards (drums).
In what might sound like a contradiction of the album’s title, Bowen’s take on these songs don’t deviate too far from the standard treatment of them, and certainly these timeless melodies aren’t diluted. But he does lots of little things of light a fire under them. “Spring Is Here” has an intro that feels like the end of winter transitioning into spring. “Yesterdays” is turned into a modern jazz delight replete with shifting tempos (and Bowen puts on a sax clinic). Even the ballad “You Don’t Know What Love Is” is barely contained as such, because Edwards livens it up with fills and bombs.
After a scorching or soulful Bowen solo, O’Connell is usually right there behind him cooling things down with an easygoing set of expressions.
If straight-up mainstream jazz is what you crave, you can’t go wrong with Ralph Bowen. Standard Deviation is a solid execution of the form from beginning to end.
A nice gig review for Orrin Evans Captain Black Big Band….
Orrin Evans’ Captain Black Big Band Smolders at Smoke
Not to disrespect everything that pianist Orrin Evans has done with smaller combos, whether as a bandleader or with tenor sax titan JD Allen, but his greatest moments so far could well be with his Captain Black Big Band. Over the past couple of years, that mighty group has earned a reputation as arguably the hottest straight-ahead oldschool postbop big band playing original material anywhere in town. So it made sense that their debut album would be a concert recording. But the the album release show for their sophomore release, Mother’s Touch, last night at Smoke uptown, brought into focus a considerably different side of the band, as elegant, sophisticated and in the moment as it is towering and lush.
Their new stuff has as just much in common with the lustrous colors and cinematic swells and ebbs of Maria Schneider’s best work as it does with Ellington at his most boisterous and regally emphatic. As Evans alluded with a wry shrug, running a big band is an enormous task pushed to extremes by its members’ changing itineraries. Finding his lead trumpeter unable to make the gig, Evans snagged John Raymond for the job, and Raymond played like he’d jumped at the chance of a lifetime, soaring and bobbing and weaving and trading bars animatedly with the high-powered sax section at the front of the stage. Likewise, baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian’s long, lurid, red-neon solo was another of the first set’s many highlights, midway through the subtly Cuban-tinged Gianluca Renzi composition Here’s the Captain. This fourteen-piece edition of the band used that number to close it down, singing warmly casual aah-aahs together as they wound it out on a warmly triumphant note.
The new album’s title track is a two-parter, and it’s essentially a couple of long intros with tantalizingly short solos for piano and tenor sax. On album, the two are separated; in concert, Evans did the logical thing by playing them back-to-back and stretching them out a little, letting his own precise, glimmeringly lyrical phrases linger up to an animated, breathlessly clustering, stairstepping tenor sax solo (the club was pretty packed; from the very back of the bar, it was hard to see who was playing what). The rest of the set was a roller-coaster ride punctuated by express-train bursts from the brass, incisively lyrical passages for just piano, bass and drums, and frequent artful, animated pairings of brass and reeds over some fantastically subtle drumming, especially considering the heft and bulk of this band – was that Anwar Marshall having a great time hitting the clave and all kinds of implications of it? This is what happens when you show up late for the Captain, a powerful reminder why the guy’s so popular.
Here’s the first review for our latest release by saxophonist Ralph Bowen “Standard Deviation”…
Ralph Bowen goes slightly left of center while delivering his finest effort in Standard Deviation
Standard Deviation is the fifth release on the incredibly consistent Posi-Tone label. The irony here being that Bowen has always been a model of consistency, an artist as technically proficient as he is artistically gifted. Bowen’s other four releases have been met with critical acclaim however there was a certain air of predictability that surrounded each and not in a bad way. The previous Posi-Tone efforts were the epitome of the classic straight ahead sound with a sizzling swing and arrangements that were zen like in approach. Nothing was wasted…
Standard Deviation has Bowen playing compositions that are certainly a vital part of his harmonic wheelhouse but his arrangements of tunes such as “Isn’t It Romantic” and “Dream Dancing” show an amazing ability to manipulate a melody without mangling the original but still managing to move the composition to a new place. The Richard Rogers standard “Isn’t It Romantic” is magically reintroduced as a spritely syncopated odd metered gem with an organic heart beat and a color palette as vivid as the cover art. Pianist Bill O’Connell handles the arrangement on “Yesterday” and seems to be singing from the same lyrical hymnal as Bowen with flowing harmonics and a percussive onslaught that puts the paddles to yet another standard that has been beat to death over the past few decades. Bowen is back with the minor key and odd metered Cole Porter number “Dream Dancing.” Stellar…
The exponential growth of Ralph Bowen is staggering. Lyrical focused, harmonically intense and with arrangement skills that will help reinvent the Great American Songbook. Standard Deviation continues to reinforce my feeling that Posi-Tone boasts the finest stable of tenor players of any label in North America. Ralph Bowen simply crushes this offering. The all star band in comprised of the previously mentioned Bill O’Connell on piano, Kenny Davis on bass and Donald Edwards on drums, as formidable a 4tet as one could find. Virtually perfect on every level.