Los Angeles-based Posi-Tone Records sends me red-meat jazz discs faster than I can keep up with them. Here’s what I think of some of the label’s most recent releases from musicians who have been on its roster for a while now:
All Tied Up (Posi-Tone)
Jared Gold
The latest CD from organist Jared Gold could equally have been billed as an outing by the Posi-Tone All-Stars. The fourth disc by Gold on Posi-Tone in as many years, All Tied Up features Gold with label-mates saxophonist Ralph Bowen and trumpeter Jim Rotondi. Completing the quartet is drummer Quincy Davis, on faculty these days at the University of Winnipeg’s jazz program. He has a precise, powerful hookup with Gold and contributes just the right crackling swing.
The disc is all about swinging fiercely and blowing hard, with an occasional break for a bit of funkiness. Gold contributes five of eight tracks and there’s one apiece from each of the other musicians. Gold’s My Sentiments Exactly and Get Out of My Sandbox and may not be so striking when it comes to their titles, but they’re rousing themes that give the CD plenty of ignition as Gold, Bowen, Rotondi and Davis tear into them. Gold’s a potent player coming out of Larry Young’s arresting modal style, and he draws on the organ’s sonic possibilities to spur the music on. Bowen, one of Saskatchewan’s biggest gifts to jazz, is an absolute terror thanks to his passionate sounds when it comes to exploring chords with long lines. Rotondi steps up and sounds sassy on this disc, a bit Hubbard-like at times, only more mortal.
The disc is pretty much balladless if we’re talking about songs that express tenderness or romance. Instead, the slow songs Dark Blue (by Rotondi) and Gold’s own Saudades are more in keeping with the disc’s muscular, bopping vibe. Mama Said, and the closer, Just A Suggestion, funky, gospel-tinged.
Power Play (Posi-Tone)
Ralph Bowen
On his third Posi-Tone disc in as many years, saxophonist Bowen works his way deeper into the post-bop bag that he’s been exploring for almost three decades. In the mid-1980s, soon after he graduated from Rutgers University, the Guelph native was tapped for the post-Wynton, Young Lions outfit Out of the Blue, which also included Renee Rosnes and Kenny Garrett in one of its incarnations. A stylistic straight line connects the music on those OTB records and the hearty, hard-swinging fare on Bowen’s aptly named Power Play CD.
Bowen’s made his reputation as a virtuosic, eloquent tenor player, and on tracks such as the swaggering KD’s Blues, the brisk harmonic slalom Two-Line Pass, the urgent modal exhortationThe Good Sheppard, and the lyrical but exciting Walleye Jigging, his flowing lines and rhythmic drive consistently delight. Bowen’s one of many saxophonists of his generation who flow out of the John Coltrane-Michael Brecker branch of tenor saxophone, but he’s certainly among my absolute favourites in this subset of hornmen.
That said, Bowen branches out on this disc, demonstrating how he can express himself on other horns. On one track, he plays alto saxophone (the knotty, intense, BreckerishDrummheller Valley, which finds him in a few spots recalling his former OTB bandmate Garrett). On two change-of-pace tracks, Bowen plays soprano saxophone. The slow, waltzing Jessicaand the disc’s closer, A Solar Romance are fine, although the latter tune’s placement at the end of the disc gives Power Play a less powerful finish.
Alternately, the disc might have ended with its only standard, a gorgeous, classic My One And Only Love, to send listeners out with a reiteration of Bowen on his primary horn. It sounds like it could have been a classy set-ender to me, akin to a ballad encore.
Bowen’s rhythm section consists of the Philadephia pianist (and Posi-Tone recording artist) Orrin Evans, who is unfailingly interesting as he draws upon pianists from Wynton Kelly to McCoy Tyner, bassist Kenny Davis (an OTB alumnus like Bowen) and drummer Donald Edwards, a snappy, convincing player.
Captain Black Big Band (Posi-Tone)
Captain Black Big Band
Here’s a video that says what the Captain Black Big Band, directed by pianist Orrin Evans, is all about:
The group’s eponymous CD features seven tracks culled from three nights of gigging in Philadelphia and New York. Regardless of when and where the music was recorded, the excitement on the bandstands and in the rooms is clear. While I sometimes wish the disc’s recording quality was better, it still allows the whoops and exhortations of the band members to be heard during the driving performances.
The first few tracks on the CD lean toward minor modal thrashing. Case in point is the opener, Art of War by drummer Ralph Peterson.
On the disc, Art of War is a punchy, concise opener, featuring Rob Landham’s tart alto saxophone. It’s followed by two tracks that extend the minor modal vibe — Here’s the Captain, a lush Latin tune by Gianluca Renzi that features saxophonist Victor North, and bass clarinetist Todd Marcus’ Inheritance, which pulls from John Coltrane’s India, and which allows Marcus and the Handel-quoting trumpeter Walter White to stretch out.
Big Jimmy, the first of four Evans tunes, is a bright, classic swinger. Trumpeter White seizes the tune by the horns during his solo, and Ralph Bowen contributes a sprinting soprano saxophone turn. Captain Black offers some swaggering swinging, and Bowen is back, tearing through the changes.
Easy Now, the disc’s longest, slowest track, feels a bit baggy to me at first as it moves through its rumbling overture — better recording quality would likely have helped — but the piercing trumpeter Tatum Greenblatt lifts the music up during his feature.
The disc closes with its most intense piece, Jena 6, which is named after six black youths in Louisiana whose arrests on an assault charge gave rise to massive civil rights demonstrations in 2007 (trumpeter Christian Scott’s composition Jenacide is similarly inspired). After the tune’s initial, dirge-like passage, alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw is utterly searing as the tune moves from roiling, rubato to fast, frenetic swinging to a Coltrane-style ovation. Shaw finishes the tune by himself, adding some screech to his sound during the powerful cadenza.
The End of Fear (Posi-Tone)
Tarbaby
The End of Fear is the stylistic outlier of this batch, eschewing Posi-Tone’s primarily post-bopping sensibility for music with more jagged edges and not-so-thinly-veiled social commentary.
The clearest link to Posi-Tone is pianist Orrin Evans, who joins bassist Eric Revis and drummer Nasheet Waits to form Tarbaby. Guesting on selected tracks are trumpeter Nicholas Payton, tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen and alto saxophonist Oliver Lake.
The disc’s four shortest tunes function as interludes but they’re also bursts of energy and attitude that tell you a lot about where Tarbaby’s coming from. The first of them is the opener by Revis, E-Math, which combines dark fractured funk lines with layers of mysterious muttering — snippets such as “Does it swing?” “Swing is old,” “The only way you can could swing is from a tree — put a noose around your neck,” and “Where’s the melody?” compete with someone muttering mathematical gibberish. Heads is a condensed bit of meta-music and protest, opening with the words, “Jazz. The word to me means freedom of expression. That’s what I think of it. That’s all.” Someone yells “Go!” and after a minute and half of tumultous free playing, the track ends with Malcolm X saying — apropos of the disc’s title — “No, I don’t worry. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.” Tails is an roiling, miniature companion to Heads. The CD’s other sub-two-minute track is a run through the Bad Brains’ Sailin’ On, true to its hardcore punk spirit.
Also defiant, and in a more programmatic way, is Evans’ Jena 6. Performed by Tarbaby’s core trio, it’s more mournful and less fierce than the version heard on Evans’ big-band recording.
While they may not be so explicit in their politics, covers of pieces by Sam Rivers (Unity) and Andrew Hill (Tough Love), as well as Oliver Lake’s urgent, start-and-stop swinger November ’80 are similarly spirited. In a similar vein, Revis’ Brews is, in fact, a blues and a waltzing, fractured one at that.
In the middle of the CD, there’s a moment of rest when the trio, joined by Allen, offer a melancholy, beautiful reading of Fats Waller’s Lonesome Me, stressing its melody over any flourishes of improvisation.
Hesitation by Waits, which features Payton, begins as a rumbling ballad but grows to be florid and turbulent. Paul Motian’s Abacus provides a wispy, ethereal conclusion for a CD that for much of its duration was spiky, tense and audacious — to the point that it did not sound quite like a Posi-Tone CD.
