Joe Mongelli and the Cape Jazz Crew's WashAshore on CD

If the name of a jazz ensemble is Joe Mongelli and the Cape Jazz Crew, the new CD is titled "WashAshore," and the album cover features a small boat that has indeed washed up on a shore in Cape Cod, you're probably going to think this music is going to be really, really mellow. And it is. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Think "mellow jazz" and you might conjure words such as "boring" or "vapid" or even the dreaded "lite jazz."

This new album from trumpeter and arranger Joe Mongelli is a different type of mellow, one you can explore with both sides of your brains. While these ten tracks are all old standards such as Ellington's "I Got It Bad" and Bacharach's "Alfie" and Milt Jackson's "Bags Groove," Mongelli is known for his thoughtful and distinctive arrangements. His dedication to this side of the process had to do with an injury (the liner notes don't elaborate) that sidelined him as a classical trumpet player for thirty years. During his convalescence he honed his songwriting and arranging skills and even experimented in electronica, pop and other genres before centering on jazz.

That career diversity theme certainly isn't plastered all over this album, but you do get the sense that Mongelli takes every genre with equal seriousness. Joe and his band--pianist Fred Boyle, bassist Ron Ormsby and drummers Steve Langone and Bart Weisman--play it pretty much straight when it comes to delivering sultry and lush jazz. They are being inventive and thoughtful with arrangements, but not revolutionary. This is the stuff of cotillions, swanky nightclubs, the type of wedding that set back the bride's father six figures, but that's not a knock for not taking risks. Mongelli and his crew are precise and polished, yes, but they've backed into something deeper and more thoughtful, a sound that is both hypnotic and flattering to the jazz fan's intellect. He has big and vibrant ideas, but they always make sense.

Mongelli also serves as producer, and he does a credible job with creating a big sound for an intimate jazz ensemble--the stage feels like a warm and well-lit cocoon, round and big. When Mongelli plays a muted horn it can be just a touch forward, but that's what muted horns do. It's otherwise a soothing album with a big heart and plenty of drive, the kind of music that makes you think about forgetting about thinking.

Two Great Percussion CDs from Ron Francis Blake and Melodic Intersect

I've lumped these two contemporary jazz titles because they almost didn't make the cut. No, they weren't that bad--they just wouldn't play in my reference CD player. I looked at the surfaces of the two CDs to see if they were scratched and they appeared to be okay. I shoved them off to the side and planned on sending an email to the publicist when I got the chance. Then I thought hey, maybe it's not the CDs. Maybe it's the CD player. So I brought them out to my car and yes, you guessed it...they played perfectly fine.

That was a couple of weeks ago, and they're both still in my car's CD player. It took me a while to break through to each album's greatness--they didn't make solid first impressions mostly because car stereos kind of suck, even the good ones. But after a couple of weeks, and after playing them in another high-quality CD transport, I'm here to say that if you're looking for jazz that features incredible percussion work, these two CDs are among the best of the year.

Both albums are very different, especially during casual listening. Melodic Intersect's new album, Looking Forward, has a novel approach: take a tabla and a sitar and add them into a traditional jazz ensemble with guitar, keyboard, sax and cajon, not to mention additional percussion. The blend is not initially as successful as I thought it would be, mostly because Enayet Hossain (tabla) and Hidayat Khan (sitar) are playing at a masterful level of innovation while the others rely too much on a somewhat dated sound that comes straight out of the digitally-glazed 1980s. Tabla, sitar and acoustic guitar--a nice match. Tabla, sitar and synthesizer--way too New Age. Tabla, sitar and saxophone--bad idea.

Forget those disparate elements and concentrate on Hossain and Khan and suddenly you'll see the genius. Hossain is listed first in the album credits, and strangely enough the album does center upon the tablas. He is an incredible drummer who can extract a wide variety of sounds from his drum, and he can run through the most difficult time signatures with ease. The final track of this album, "Rhythmicpaths," is where Looking Forward becomes a masterpiece because it's just twelve minutes of tabla and "world percussion." It's hypnotic and crazy beautiful.

Ron Francis Blake, however, hits the ground running with his new CD, Assimilation. At first it sounds like a very talented jazz ensemble cranking out impressive versions from a variety of jazz genres. Blake is a trumpet player, and he has assembled a large ensemble that sounds like nothing but horns and percussion from a distance. After repeated listening, you'll eventually say something like "do you hear that drummer?" Once you lock in to that, you'll suddenly realize that you're in the middle of one of the most impressive percussion records you'll ever hear.

Jimmy Branly is, for lack of a better term, the lead percussive talent on this album, and he plays as if he's possessed. The crazy change-ups, the intricate time signatures and beats you've never heard before--it's astonishing. Add in such guest percussionists Poncho Sanchez and Joey De Leon and suddenly you have a master class in jazz percussion. Then you notice how the more demure musicians add a dreamy and provocative ring around the edges of sound--Nick Mancini's vibraphone, Andy Langham's piano and all those horn players, eleven of them in total.

While Looking Forward contains hidden treasures, ones that may require a bit of digging, Assimilation is like jumping into a railroad car full of gold bullion. Both are utterly fascinating from a percussive perspective. Highly recommended.

Free Radicals' Outside the Comfort Zone on CD

I WILL NOT JUDGE AN ALBUM BY ITS COVER.
I WILL NOT JUDGE AN ALBUM BY ITS COVER.
I WILL NOT JUDGE AN ALBUM BY ITS COVER.
I WILL NOT JUDGE AN ALBUM BY ITS COVER.

I've been sitting on this release for a few weeks now. I received it during a time when I was reviewing a lot of free jazz, and I needed a break from the measured chaos. I saw the name "Free Radicals" and thought oh, that's just a catchy name for a jazz ensemble that handles lot of free jazz. The title of this CD, Outside the Comfort Zone seemed to confirm this--this was going to be another sonic and intellectual challenge. It's hard work analyzing free jazz and mapping out its structure. So I set it aside.

Boy, was I wrong about this CD.

Back in the '80s, when I used to hang out in places like Madame Wong's West and the Hollywood Paladium, we'd call Free Radicals a party band. That meant they were lively, energetic genre-crossers that made music to energize an eclectic and knowing crowd. This particular nine-piece ensemble has been marketed rather loosely under jazz, but you'll hear just about everything else in the mix--ska, '70s funk, '60s TV show themes, Delta blues, acid rock, New Orleans jazz, arena rock and perhaps a soupcon of straightforward jazz. Along with at least a dozen guest stars, Free Radicals create unique songs that plant themselves firmly on their own unique planets, and each tune will remind you of something you've heard before, something from the past that was really, really cool. 22 of the 23 tracks included on Outside the Comfort Zone are original compositions/improvisations from the group regulars, and the final track is a very loose adaptation from Sun Ra.

You can sit back and listen to this music, your toes tappin', and you might even get up and dance. But there's another hidden layer to explore--the group is trying to make socially conscious music that scrutinizes such issues as the Iraq War, white supremacy and border walls. They're playing instrumentals, so you have to dig a little into such titles as "Ambush ICE," "Audacity of Drones" and "Freedom of Consumption." Or you can see the collective perform live, where they'll be more active guides.

Free Radicals started off in a Houston pawn shop about twenty years ago, and since then they've put out a handful of albums while performing "in clubs, street protests, punk rock house parties, art openings, weddings, funerals and breakdance competitions. This album shares that same grassroots attitude into its production values--this isn't an audiophile disc so to speak, but that certainly doesn't matter when you're having this much fun.

Oscar Feldman's Gol on CD

This one has the looks, the vibe and the attitude of a great jazz reissue, and that's why it stands out from the flood of contemporary jazz releases I have in for review. Saxophonist Oscar Feldman comes from Argentina, where he plays for big and appreciative crowds. That's why Gol, his latest release, sounds both polished and revolutionary--this guy plays in entirely his own space and sounds like no one else and he's known for that. His bandmates--drummer Antonio Sanchez, bassist John Benitez, keyboard player Leo Genovese and vocalist Guillermo Klein--are all old friends of Feldman, and they have that masterful aura of a quintet that has flourished through most of its long and storied career.

Gol, humorously enough, is named for a soccer victory, as in "GOOOOL!" It's no secret that soccer and music are a huge part of Argentinian culture, and this collection of standards and originals is celebratory in a vaguely football sort of way. You'll get a free-form yet supremely musical version of Ellington's "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart" that is held together with Feldman's outspokenly melodic sax, and you'll get a rambunctious version of the Beatles' "I Feel Fine' that resembles a drunken post-game party with plenty of Quilmes. You'll get Beck's "Nobody's Fault But My Own," which will not remind you of Beck at all until you look at the track listing and realize that yes, this is a Beck song.

Feldman's lone composition, "Viva Belgrano"--Guillermo Klein is responsible for the other two originals--is the thematic centerpiece of the album. This is where Feldman rhapsodizes about his hometown football team and the goal that propelled them to stardom, all marked by a climactic GOOOOOL. You get the crowd noise, the commentary and all of the excitement in a unique jazz song that manages to elevate the originality of all eight tracks as a whole. Gol flows with this athletic and fanatical energy; it never stops to catch its breath.

The sound quality, by the way, is exceptional. This is another release from Zoho Records, and their releases have been uniformly excellent when it comes to creating magic in the studio. There's only one thing that could make Gol even greater, and that's a release on vinyl. The music, the artwork and the quality of these performances deserve the best.

2L Recordings' Interactions on Blu-ray Audio and CD/SACD Hybrid

A collection of 20th century violin and piano duets can be heady, troubling work, especially when these pieces come from composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Witold Lutoslawski and Fartein Valen. Yet there's something incredibly lyrical about Interactions, the latest hi-rez recoding from Norway's 2L Recordings. Featuring Bard Monsen on violin and Gunnar Flagstad on piano, this recording isn't quite as lush as a mint Shaded Dog of Clair de Lune, but under those expected sharp edges you'll find plenty of real emotion and beauty.

These three pieces--Sonate from Valen, Duo Concertant from Stravinsky and Partita from Lutoslawski--were extracted from the cusp of certain classical periods, where each composer was inspired by the distant past to venture into the unknown. That means you'll hear traditional Bach counterpoints in Valen's late Romantic work, and occasional Baroque flourishes from Lutoslawski. (As a college student I once attended a Lutoslawski concert at the Dorothy Chandler in LA--with the composer himself conducting. It was an ear-opening experience.) Stravinsky stretches back even farther into the past by employing Virgil's antique verse forms.

Okay, okay...I'll stop reading from the liner notes now. As usual, 2L releases contain cerebral themes that are far from obvious to casual listeners, and the generous booklet contains the keys to enjoying these pieces on a deeper level.

What makes this recording so special, and I've discussed this before, is that Morten Lindberg of 2L is a master of capturing duos, trios and other intimate ensembles in a way that makes them sound spacious. We're not talking about preternatural spaciousness--I've heard my share of recordings where singers stand fifteen feet tall and the piano soundboard stretches for miles. No, this expansive feel is due to the venue, yet another Norwegian church, and Morten's talent for mating the acoustics of that space with the sounds of the musical instruments.

That means you get the usual warmth and decay that you'll find in most 2L Recordings, if not all. In a way this almost feels like a cop-out, a variation on "if you like 2L Recordings, you'll love this!" But here's the thing--maybe Morten's adventurous recording style keeps improving with age. Maybe he's been discovering more ways to take advantage of the various technologies at his disposal--Dolby Atmos, 2.0 LPCM, 9.1 Auro-3D 96 kHz. Maybe he's done this so many times that every set-up is arranged by instinct. Maybe Morten has the answer. There's just something about the way he captures the essence of a piano, a violin and a church that excites the synapses in my brain so that I feel that this is the way a piano and a violin and a church would sound if I was there in the Sofienberg Church in Norway, sitting in on the performance.

It's a simple idea, but isn't that what it's all about? By supplying that sort of clarity and logic, Morten makes it easier to dig into the inspired performances of Monsen and Flagstad and to appreciate those didactic yet playful themes.

Roger Davidson Trio with Hendrik Meurkens--Prayer for Tomorrow (Oracao Para Amanha) on CD

Roger Davidson embarked on a long journey to get where he is today. He grew up in both Paris and New York and was originally a trained classical pianist. He fell in love with jazz in the '90s and began a successful recording career in that genre. Oracao Para Amanha, his latest CD, is the result of more change--his love for Brazilian jazz has blossomed considerably in recent years, and he decided to form a new trio with bassist Eduardo Belo and drummer Adriano Santos. The three started playing the hot spots in NYC, and jazz lovers started showing up in droves.

This CD was recorded live over several nights in the Zinc Bar in NYC, a place famous for featuring Brazilian jazz musicians. (The applause is unusually muted and distant in this particular recording, which seems a little odd at first.) The trio was joined by Hendrik Meurkens, considered a modern virtuoso for both harmonica and vibraphone. The result is a crisp, electric set that jumps out and engages you immediately.

To show how committed Davidson is to Brazilian jazz, he composed all twelve of these tracks--an amazing feat when you consider how rich and distinct each song sounds. After the first couple of listens, I just assumed that Davidson and his ensemble were playing Brazilian standards. Despite the fact that much of the tracks are devoted to improvised solos, especially when it comes to Meurkens' unusually folksy harmonica, melody is king here.

While most of these contemporary jazz releases I've been reviewing have good to excellent sound quality, I will mention the excellence of Prayer for Tomorrow. Percussion sounds tight and punchy--you feel it in your gut. Other than the distant feel of the audience, this CD captures a lot of that energy and spontaneity that's only found in well-recorded live albums. Highly recommended.

MJ Territo's Ladies Day on CD

"Life can be crappy, but you can be happy..."

Whew. Eric Idle references aside, that's a rough way to begin an album. When I first listened to MJ Territo's new album, Ladies Day, I thought that I had wandered into the same lyrical steppe as with Jeannie Tanner's latest album, where every line is a little too on-the-nose. Fortunately that first song, written by Territo herself, is short--and everything that comes after it is much, much better.

Territo came up with the idea for this album while assembling a set list for one of her gigs. She noticed that many of her song choices were written by women, and the Ladies Day project was born. Her choices are very interesting and more varied than you would think--Dave Brubeck wrote "In Your Own Sweet Way" with his wife Iola, for instance. She also includes straightforward versions of such standards as "Everything Is Moving Too Fast," which was co-written by Peggy Lee, and Abbey Lincoln's "You Gotta Pay the Band." For a more modern take, she's even included a version of Patricia Barber's "I Could Eat Your Words."

This project would have lost some of its purity if Territo had chosen a bunch of session guys to back her in this recording. As a result, we have another all-woman band, just like the 3Divas CD I just reviewed earlier this week. While I criticized 3Divas for relying too much on the outdated "diva" themes, I'm impressed with the way it's handled here--we have a group of talented musicians (pianist Linda Presgrave, bassist Iris Ornig, drummer Barbara Merjan, flautist Andrea Brachfeld, sax player Virginia Mayhew and harpist Brandee Younger) who simply dig in and make beautiful music. No qualifiers are needed.

None of this would work if Territo's voice wasn't so strong and agile. She does come from the straight-on school of jazz singing, where everything note is delivered with clarity and emphasis, but she doesn't succumb to the plaintive. There's a loveliness in the way she holds onto notes as if she's caressing each one before releasing it out into the world. Ladies Day is, ultimately, a lively and cheerful collection of performances that are nicely realized and delivered with the sort of brio that comes with always looking at the bright side of life.

(See what I did there?)