“Streams” was the title of a fine album by Sam Rivers from the 1970s, now a collector’s rarity, alas.
Unfortunately, the cover doesn’t match the title, hence the choice of the more appropriate cover of another fine Bill Evans album.
But beyond the refreshing effect, what do moving waters have to do with the chronicles of the Italian jazz summer? Yes, they do, as demonstrated by two hot afternoons at the Teatro Morlacchi, the Altra Umbria Jazz.
The protagonists are two quartets led by two musicians who, despite being detached from at least a couple of jazz generations, have revealed a similar conception of “music for flows,” which, while at times evoking books already well-established and well-known in the recording world, dissolves the individual pieces into a flowing and ever-changing continuum.
Indeed, jazz writers of great caliber had predicted an inexorable shift toward structured composition and marked individuality for the jazz of the new millennium…
Both groups are well known for a series of notable recordings, which have consolidated their image. But in both cases, live listening has suggested extended forms corresponding to long, dilated tempos; therefore, immersive listening is required, a completely different experience from listening to records.
Mark Turner’s quartet (he on tenor sax, Jason Palmer on trumpet, Joe Martin on bass, and Jonathan Pinson on drums) clearly gains in freshness and novelty from the removal of the “ECM filter.”
In addition to the freedom to play on extended tempos, throughout the first part of the concert, the front line’s marked inclination toward prolonged unisons is evident, which on a purely structural level seem to hark back to bebop and only rarely open up to individual paths.
Turner remains immersed in the introverted and meditative mood we’ve long known him for, but the Tristanian influences are more distant than on past occasions. At times, his loose conversationalism recalls Rollins’s inexhaustible thematic improvisation, but in a much more linear and intellectual dimension, free from any athletic titanism.
The contrasting dialogue with Jason Palmer is very refined and effective, a vital and luminous trumpet that provides a constant counterpoint to Turner’s sax, absorbed instead in long-range melodic strings and free from showy soarings.
Behind this intense and focused front line, there’s plenty of room for a highly prominent rhythm section: Martin’s bass is clear and authoritative, but Pinson’s assertive drumming asserts itself with great determination: his dry and authoritative accents, crafted with great theatrical effectiveness, are impressive.
Well, Turner may have been a reluctant leader in the past (as he himself has stated on various occasions), but he now seems to have acquired a taste for building and shaping a band that boasts both a clear identity and a lively internal dialogue.
Watch out for his next appearances on our stages (the Perugia gig was a truly invaluable one, by the way).
This time we’re in luck: Turner and his band are in Berlin just a few days before the Perugia concert. Great video, you’ve got a whole 22 minutes of music to enjoy.
Immanuel Wilkins, on the other hand, seems to have been born a fully-fledged leader from Minerva’s mind. But appearances can be deceiving: in jazz, no one is born a ‘caballero’ (as is too often believed in our parts), and Immanuel’s 27 years have been filled with a long and varied apprenticeship.
Not only that, but to this day we still see our man appear as a sideman in musical contexts often quite distant from his already established poetics, as evidenced by his already impressive discography: hats off, he’ll go even further than he has now.
But at the Morlacchi, he’s playing on home soil, bringing his polished quartet with him: it’s wonderful to see how these DOCG jazzmen, even confined to the theater, still cherish the legend of Umbria Jazz of old and make it a point to appear there in their finest form.
They deserve at least a few words of introduction (this year, no one showed up to do so, truly sad); but fortunately, this Morlacchi audience knows very well who they’re dealing with and the caliber of the offerings they’re offered.
Here too, the concert opens with a long stream of consciousness, in which the clear voice of Wilkins’ alto sax evokes the auroral atmosphere typical of his music, but in a sort of dilated, subtle prelude that has something of a ritualistic quality.
After a long, linear progression, showcasing Wilkins’s fluidity and melodic inventiveness, the music unfolds in a long, tense dialogue between the leader’s staccato, fragmented sax and Kweku Sumbry’s pressing drums: a truly memorable moment, rightly celebrated by the audience.
Sumbry’s enveloping, omnipresent drumming immediately and clearly establishes itself as the true cornerstone of the group, balancing the ethereal freedom of the frontline.
Alas, Ryoma Takenhaga’s bass remains only a cornerstone role in the wings.
A pianist of Micah Thomas’s caliber, however, certainly cannot go unnoticed: after so much faithful, understated accompaniment, Thomas takes flight in the solo spaces with an ethereal, fingertip-based pianism tinged with luminous abstraction.
The keyboard ace thus emerges, and we note his affinity with that vein of intellectual pianism so well represented by Ethan Iverson.
The quartet’s music is a great river in which the alto is the placid heart of the current, Thomas’s faithful yet restless accompaniment the whirlpools hidden just beneath the surface, and Sumbry’s drums the foam of the rapids.
In short, another immersive and engaging listening experience that deserves adequate documentation in a beautiful live performance that captures its richness and vitality: but unfortunately, the futile trend of LPs prevents such a realization.
Stay tuned, the best is yet to come.
Still blessed by luck: this is even an amateur clip from the Perugia concert, even more precious. Hurry and enjoy it, the Thought Police are always lurking on YouTube.
