REVIEWS: All that Jazz by Simon Adams

LONDON BREW (Concord Jazz)

Trumpeter Miles Davis’s ground-breaking jazz-rock album Bitches Brewwas first released in March 1970. Fifty years later, a group of London-based musicians – notably saxophonists Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia, and trombonist Theon Cross – were preparing for a concert in London’s Barbican to celebrate the event, but then the pandemic intervened and the concert was off. Eight months on, just days after the lockdown ended, the 11-piece band reassembled in a North London studio and recorded this belated tribute.

Inspired by the original album, but utterly original, this music is often an intense maelstrom, individual instruments stepping forward out of the electronic turmoil as required and jostling for attention. But it is also beautiful in places, and frequently inventive and innovatory. A truly remarkable set.

BILL EVANS/SCOTT LaFARO/PAUL MOTIAN: Complete Trio Recordings (Fingerpoppin’ Records)

American pianist Bill Evans famously played with Miles Davis on the seminal Kind of Blue album, but his main claim to fame is the sublime trio he formed between mid-1959 and July 1961. Alongside bassist Scott LaFaro – who tragically died in a car accident in July 1962 – and drummer Paul Motian, they in effect created a leaderless partnership, a trio of equal strengths who played quietly, but to great impact.

This wonderful 5xCD set brings together their complete if sparse output: two studio albums, and two live sets from New York, one from, the other from the famous Village Vanguard. The interplay between the three musicians is phenomenal, the subtlety and nuance just perfect. Critics often overuse such words as essential, and seminal. Not this time, for this music is utterly timeless.

ELINA DUNI: A Time To Remember (ECM)

Working alongside guitarist Rob Luft, flugelhorn-player Matthieu Michel and drummer Fred Thomas, the Swiss-Albanian singer Elina Duni returns with another set of songs, all linked with the notion of time. Her repertory spans Albanian and Kosovan traditional pieces, American songs like the Broadway classic I’ll Be Seeing You and Stephen Sondheim’s Send In The Clowns, as well as originals by Duni and Luft. As before, Duni’s voice is clear in its multilingual enunciation and expressive and intimate in tone. As a group, the slightly unusual line-up creates its own sound world, in places pensive and melancholic, elsewhere more expansive. Enjoy this unique and beautiful world of theirs.

BRANDEE YOUNGER: Brand New Life (Impulse!)

In complete contrast is this new set from American harpist Brandee Younger. Her album is a tribute to Dorothy Ashby, a Black American harpist and jazz composer of the 1950s and 1960s – she later moved into r’n’b and world music – who properly established the harp as an improvising instrument and elevated it from novelty status to a frontline mainstay that could hold its own with saxophones and pianos.

Her work has become increasingly influential today, and has served as a great inspiration to Younger, undoubtedly one of the finest jazz harpists of our day. Brand New Life celebrates Ashby’s music, presenting her previously unrecorded You’re A Girl For One Man Only alongside three other compositions, a Michel Legrand classic – the predictable Windmills Of Your Mind – a great song by Stevie Wonder, and couple by Younger.

Younger is a phenomenal harpist, bringing out the sweetness and strength of her instrument, and is joined here by some strong support, notably the Minnie Ripperton-style vocals of Mumu Fresh on the title track. If this album does something to rescue Dorothy Ashby from polite oblivion, then it has done its job well.

RALPH TOWNER: At First Light (ECM)

Ralph Towner, American guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, has been recording solo guitar albums with ECM since his debut in 1973. His latest is as good as they come, his unamplified classical guitar a model of subtle, unaffected poise and precision. He never hurries his lines, nor over-emphasizes any note, but quietly states his case, each of the 11 tunes here, all but three by him, beautiful expositions of the craft of guitar performance. This a beguiling album, and one well-worth returning to with regularity.

NILS ØKLAND/SIGBJORN APELAND: Glimmer (ECM)

The Norwegian Nils Økland plays the violin and the traditional Hardanger fiddle (a sort of resonating violin), Sigbjørn Apeland the harmonium: together they explore the interface between Norwegian folk music and improvisation. Throughout, the harmonium operates as the drone or bass, holding down each song, while the violin and fiddle carry the tune. What results is a haunting and exceptionally beautiful album of timeless music, each song slowly revealing its evocative power. To call this folk music is misleading, although that is where it originates. Rather, this is traditional music presented with the same solemnity and presence as a religious mass. Austere, but quite wonderful.