Sonny Rollins – with John Coltrane in his band – cut his iconic Tenor Madness album in 1956. The Ryan Middagh Jazz Orchestra’s Tenor Madness (Ear Up Records) is an all-star assemblage of eight saxophones, four trumpets, five trombones, guitar, piano, bass, and drums. Middagh is the Tennessee-based composer, arranger, and baritone sax man whose Live From Nashville debut set the scene for this terrific six-track follow-up of creative originals and scintillating covers of the 1955 Julie London hit “Cry Me A River,” Harold Arlen’s “This Time’s The Dream’s On Me” from the 1941 Blues In The Night movie, and Anita O’Day’s 1961 Waiter, Make Mine Blues.”
Some songs should stay locked up in that old dustbin of time. I’ve always thought Jerome Kern’s 1933 “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” – covered by The Platters, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, JD Souther and dozens more – was one of those songs. I was wrong. It took New York City guitarist-composer-arranger-producer Jackson Potter on his new small things album (Shifting Paradigm Records), to make me see why. Potter – with Alex Ridout (trumpet/flugelhorn), Troy Roberts (tenor sax), Hamish Smith (bass) and Marcello Cardillo (drums) – takes this rotting corpse of a song and injects it with stunning life where its intrinsic changes that have heretofore been rather subliminal rise to the fore. And that’s not the only delight here; besides his four captivating originals, the band chews up Dave Brubeck’s 1959 “The Duke” and Cole Porter’s 1941 “Everything I Love,” and spits it back out as new inventions worthy of contemplation and utter concentration.
Ready for The Wicked Crew? For their debut, French sax man Charley Rose, New York City guitarist Silvan Joray, and Brazilian drummer Paulo Almedia convened in Switzerland as the Perceptions Trio to record their self-released, self-produced, all-original 10-track LP after jamming together for five years. This is no typical sax-guitar-drums trio; it’s wicked, what with electronica being the common denominator. Two of the 10 tracks weren’t written at all. Like spontaneous combustion starts a fire, those two tracks could be called spontaneous composition, erupting out of emotion, and when these three seamlessly impregnate their individual influences, all hell breaks loose. Wicked!
Alan Chaubert plays piano and trumpet simultaneously (no overdubs) throughout Just The Three Of Us: Me, the Trumpet and the Piano (Pacific Coast Jazz). Ably assisted by bass, drums, and percussion, his trumpet is muted, thus he sounds like Chet Baker. Born in Switzerland, he’s been playing since 12, having turned pro at 17. Highlights include the 1958 Ahmad Jamal hit “Poinciana,” as well as two by Monk and three by Bill Evans.
Mikroklima (April Records) by Gustaf Ljunggren and Emil de Waal is a 10-track manifesto on just how to meld similar minds into a kaleidoscopic whole like a pinwheel in the wind. Each track adds to the carnival. Known throughout Europe as Scandinavian pioneers, this fourth effort of theirs should cement their reputation amongst Euro hipsters. Recorded in Denmark, Emil plays drums, electronics, programming, and percussion, while Gustaf plays electric and acoustic guitar, synthesizers, electric piano, and bass. They’ve been at it for 30 years. The folkloric tinge within presents a whole new set of parameters for a jazz album, “placing more weight on texture and feeling than soloistic flair,” as they like to say.
