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This Week: an unintuitive combo that works, posthumous Haden tapes, and music for a warm rain

Joel Frahm
Don’t Explain (Palmetto)

Saxophone/piano duets are unintuitive. Piano/vocalist duos obviously work, what with the accompanist role clearly consigned to the piano. So too piano/bass, where the bass primarily accompanies. Not so with the sax/piano configuration—who’s leading, who’s accompanying? Sax/piano combos suggest risk, unswinging experiments in free improvisation, overt challenges to harmonic norms, a Paul Bley and Evan Parker skirmish.

Don’t Explain, saxophonist Joel Frahm’s release of sax/piano duets, defies all of the above. From opening title cut, a Billie Holiday original, through to the last, one of two “Round Midnight” covers, this CD just feels right, offering an uncanny and apparently effortless accessibility. It’s an achievement attributable to the individual skills of Frahm and pianist Brad Mehldau, but as well to their discernable simpatico.

The CD commences conventionally enough with “Don’t Explain,” which after a Mehldau prelude receives a sololess reading, Frahm’s affecting tenor on the melody capturing the tune’s melancholy. Harold Arlen’s “Get Happy” follows as an antidote, again conventionally, yet with sparkling solos from both piano and tenor. On “Oleo” Frahm and Mehldau engage some funky counterpoint, but their “Round Midnight” (take 3; take 1 closes the CD) is all sidelong reference to the original, really variations on a vamp abstracted from the original’s first melodic phrase. Lest the abstraction intimidate, Lennon/McCartney’s “Mother Nature’s Son” follows to inject comfort sounds, with Frahm switching to soprano on a stunning Mehldau arrangement.

Don’t Explain contains much more, even the twisty Coleman original “Turnaround,” which Frahm/Mehldau back into rather than take head on—very clever. But it’s the overall sensitivity to tune selection and to each other that lends this album its charm and broad appeal.

—Jonathan B. Frey

Charlie Haden
The Montreal Tapes (Verve)

What a joy it is to hear Joe Henderson again. The album begins with his unaccompanied tenor tracing a chorus of “Round Midnight,” his patented trills and timbral nuances in place. When Henderson passed in 2001, jazz lost one of its most distinctive and versatile voices, leaving us with only the potential of posthumous releases like this to augment his already immortal legacy. The Montreal Tapes comes from bassist Haden’s weeklong stint at a Montreal jazzfest in 1989, from which other trio encounters have previously been released. Opening night featured Henderson and drummer Al Foster, a simpatico lineup.

The four selections stretch out as the trio explores some of the linear free association that Haden purveyed with Ornette Coleman back when. “In the Moment” goes left field in its first few minutes; the eventual morph into orthodox swing is like a ship righting itself. Henderson personalizes “Round Midnight” with the same slithery lines and dramatic accents he always brought to it, while his “Passport” solo bustles with Rollins-like zeal. Haden steps out on a couple of occasions—making that bass drawl—but he’s at his best behind Henderson, as both men have a warmth of tone that meshes wonderfully together. Foster’s drumming fits like a glove and his intelligent solos draw some deserved ovations.

The only complaint is leveled at the recording itself, which suffers at times from a distant soundstage. Surely someone could have sat at a mixing desk and brought the connections of this trio into clearer focus. So, some assembly required, but otherwise a fine listen.

—Chris Mitchell

Michael Mayer
Fabric 13 (Fabric)

Leave it to the Germans to perfect microhouse: dance music with mood and nuance on the downbeats. Mayer, the head of the influential German Kompakt label, steps out with a dreamily sequenced club mix that works through hope, desire and resignation before ending back where it started (the bookends are two mixes of Heiko Voss’ aching “I Think About You”). You can dance to it (or microdance, at least) but what it’s really suited to is a walk in the warm rain. Romantic, swooping, melancholy—and, frankly, gorgeous.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

May 20, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 21 © 2004 Metro Pulse