Live Review: Lee Konitz Quartet 7.25.09

If you didn't think 60 years was a long time, perhaps a conversation with Lee Konitz would change your mind. The altoist who got a big break in 1949 playing on Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool has been pushing boundaries and exploring the limits of jazz's West Coast ever since. And on a night dedicated to deconstructing familiar tunes, Konitz' trio picked standards apart and left them that way. The renditions were loose quilts whose strings were never tied up at the edges.

It was a treat to hear drummer Paul Motian, the reigning king of colorists, hint at polyrhythms by playing their every third or fourth note rather than hammering them down listeners' throats. He didn't break into a swing -- or any consistent drumbeat -- until the last tune of the first set, and even then his rhythm was minimalist and beautifully hollowed-out. But it was pianist Dan Tepfer who stole the show, demonstrating such natural restraint that he was loath to spend more than a few measures playing chords. Tepfer largely stuck to two-handed octave lines and dissonant patterns, painting circles around Konitz' tired, restless, on-again off-again sketches.

Saturday night's performance, the last of a four-night run at New York's Birdland jazz club, was a conversation in the truest sense of the word, and the dialogue between Konitz and Tepfer held the night's most explorative subplot. The bandleader rarely lay out for more than eight bars at a time, but he didn't spend four minutes wailing away while the others comped, either. In fact, no one took a traditional, extended solo all night. In this conversation, everyone's contributions were equally important; speakers hesitated to listen to each other but interjected at will. It was a lilting, collectivist free that brought the egalitarian vision of Motian's old boss, Bill Evans, into striking new territory.

Many in the audience were completely blindsided. They were not expecting a "Stella by Starlight" so sketchily rendered that the melody was almost impossible to place, or an entire set in which any combination of piano, bass, drums, or saxophone was equally likely. Dinner conversations continued well into the first half of the set, and many of those gazing around the room were as exasperated as they were unmoved. But by the time late in the evening when Konitz announced, more than a touch idiosyncratically, that the band would do some "free play," the faces were all rapt, focused on the stage.

The conversation wasn't easy to penetrate, but as the quartet gained locomotion, listeners grasped what was between each lethargic, halting phrase and the heedful responses that tumbled into one another with an unforeseeable logic. As the final tune drew to a close, Tepfer wandered into a solo piano improvisation of high, Ethan Iversonesque three-note arpeggios and a slow, scale-bending melody in the left hand. Again and again, Tepfer showed a finesse and deference to melody that Motian might have recognized as largely reminiscent of Keith Jarrett.

Saturday night found Konitz, one of the the oldest masters of counter-bop, renegotiating post-bop's language. If this prerogative didn't seem immediately logical, the quartet's interactive mastery eventually made it so.

Look Both Ways #10: Squarepusher has Tomorrow’s 'Weather' Forecast

Experimental musician Squarepusher, a.k.a. Tom Jenkinson, recorded an album last year inspired by something that most people might assume to have been a psychedelic-drug-induced hallucination. Jenkinson laconically calls it “a daydream.” In this fantasy, a magical rock band played a concert involving a guitarist who could travel through time, an entire building that served as a bass amplifier, and drums that switched places with each other and received electromagnetic radiation from stars. The album that resulted, last year’s herky-jerky Just a Souvenir, is not for the faint of heart. But if you get jazzed, so to speak, by exploratory instrumental music, it’s a real gem from one of today’s best progressive musicians.

Squarepusher is performing this Friday in my temporary hometown of Bologna, Italy, so to prepare for the show I’ve been listening to Souvenir, his latest. I’m constantly reminded of its nagging similarities to innovative jazz-fusion group Weather Report’s 1976 LP, Black Market.

Weather Report was founded in the early 1970s by saxophonist Wayne Shorter and keyboardist Joe Zawinul, two preeminent expatriates of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way sessions. The group quickly moved away from these roots, embracing a highly arranged and more composition-based sound that cuddled even closer with rock music. Weather Report even scored a hit single – almost unheard of in instrumental music – with “Birdland” in 1977.

Squarepusher, meanwhile, is a one-man band from England who started out in the 1990s as a leader in the virtuosic genre of manic dance music known as drum and bass. Squarepusher has always incorporated jazz and rock into his music, and they are especially relevant on Souvenir.

It’s a truism for me to say that the differences between the artists I compare far outweigh the similarities, but in the case of the relentlessly innovative and unpredictable Squarepusher it bears mentioning. His music is absolutely not a direct legacy of Weather Report, but the similarities are there.

For one, the fretless electric bass is central to both records. Jenkinson’s primary instrument is the bass, and his playing – ranging from surprisingly ear-catching improvisations to rhythm-bending bass lines – is his music’s most engaging element. Black Market was the first Weather Report album to feature Jaco Pastorius, arguably the most influential electric bassist of all time. But it also showcased outgoing bassist Alphonso Johnson, who should not be lost in Pastorius’ shadow. Both players provide conspicuous, energetic foundations for the complex and highly rhythmic compositions on Black Market.

“Gibraltar” is Black Market’s most similar song to the music on Souvenir. When the rhythm section busts in at 1:20, we hear a Johnson bass line that strays from root notes and downbeats, playing games with the quick and funky drum part. Shorter and Zawunil double on melodies that zoom up and shoot back down, and I find myself nodding my head so forcefully it looks like a Dr. Dre beat must be coming through my headphones. On the Souvenir song “Planet Gear,” Squarepusher layers synth chords over a jumpy bass line and a mathy drumbeat, while a climbing, atmospheric synthesizer line recalls Shorter’s solos on the lyricon (a type of saxophone synthesizer he used on Black Market).

And forget about the comparisons for a moment—Souvenir is a record worth hearing regardless of context. To listen to Squarepusher’s bass improvisations on the song “Quadrature” is to hear him turn out scores of incredibly melodic phrases – each of which could serve as hooks for their own fusion compositions – while he ventures in and out of scales. Sometimes he glides along with the fleeting chords, sometimes he collides with them. Some of the phrases are jazz arpeggios and some are classical-influenced lines that stair-step downward, adding color to the chords beneath them.

• To watch and/or download some high-quality videos of interviews with and performances by Squarepusher, click here and choose the "03. Watch" tab.

A version of this piece first appeared as a column in the April 13 issue of the Tufts Daily.

Look Both Ways #9: Wynton Marsalis and the Stories of Music

Much of what luminary trumpeter Wynton Marsalis does, including his work as musical director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, is aimed at keeping jazz music relevant. And last month, Marsalis came out with one of his most impossible-to-ignore new projects: a concept album composed of quick poetry readings and accompanying musical pieces performed by his jazz quintet. Gimmicky? Sure. Fun? Absolutely.

When I listen to the album, He and She, I’m often haunted by the mental image of Marsalis sitting in his Midtown Manhattan office, clad in a Brooks Brothers smoking jacket. He claps his hands and exclaims, “I know something they’ll all like—I’ll do a poetry album about puppy love, and I’ll play jazz tunes that go along with the poems!” Of course, this is unfair, and Marsalis deserves credit for pushing into new territory and coming away with something as refreshingly original and utterly enjoyable as He and She. That said, the pleasant music just isn’t as energetic or engaging as Marsalis’ best work.

To find a more timeless record that uses both spoken word and jazz to illustrate the emotions of romance, we have to go back in history but we don’t have to abandon Wynton. Seventeen years ago, he made a remarkable album, Blue Interlude, whose centerpiece is a 37-minute-long suite called “Blue Interlude (The Bittersweet Saga of Sugar Cane and Sweetie Pie).”

In this piece, the Wynton Marsalis Septet uses instrumental music to narrate the dynamic relationship of two mythic lovers. But it’s not without the help of spoken word: in a monologue that precedes the suite, Marsalis introduces Sugar Cane and Sweetie Pie, interspersing the occasional piano line to help acquaint us with the characters. “Well now this is Sugar Cane,” he says, banging out two high, harsh chords on the keys. “As you can tell, he’s a very dissonant, high-strung sort of fellow, perhaps trapped in the gruffness of his own presentation.”

The suite itself comes off without a hitch, and its sheer force is owed to the players, who comprise one of Marsalis’ most exciting ensembles. The musicians handle with remarkable virtuosity the piece’s many time changes and blurry blend of strict arrangement, communal improvisation and big band-style horn harmonies that back a single player’s solo. There are happy times and sad times here, attraction and anger, confusion and confidence.

Where Blue Interlude gives its top-notch musicians ample time to stretch out with expressive solos, He and She concentrates more on discipline and structured arrangements. Occasionally, it can feel like it blurs the line between classical and jazz (both genres in which Marsalis is an expert) as much as it blends poetry and music. Long-form solos are scarce, and while the tonal tales of an endearing four-track suite on firsts (“First Crush,” “First Slow Dance,” “First Kiss” and “First Time”) surely get their point across, most jazz freaks would probably agree that Marsalis succeeds more comfortably when he is less concerned with realist representation and more inclined to let the old tricks of bebop work their magic.

For instance, the 12-minute-long “The Razor Rim” hits a stride thanks to unbridled solos from Marsalis and tenor saxophonist Walter Blanding. Pianist Dan Nimmer does his best McCoy Tyner over the tune’s mid-tempo, hard-bop feel, pounding out planar harmonies and thundering fifths in the low register.

Marsalis probably won’t become the Lincoln Center’s poet laureate, but the verses he uses to set up the music on He and She are whimsical and charming. The first poem runs, “What caused country blues men to claim / A man and a woman is a dangerous game? / Well every school boy knows one plus one equals two / And boys know less than girls do.” It’s followed by “School Boy,” a tune that lives up to its name by returning to an earlier time, striding along while Marsalis channels King Oliver. Nimmer polishes off a lively chordal solo à la Erroll Garner, and all told, the tune conjures the sneakiness of a class clown and the nostalgic joy of everyone’s first-grade memories.

A version of this piece first appeared as a column in the April 6 issue of the Tufts Daily.