When on working holidays to the Windy City, European improvisers commonly come in contact with players in the Ken Vandermark coterie. The Chicagoan’s industry and cachet in his adopted town virtually guarantees it through ever-diminishing degrees of separation. Italian reedist Daniele D’Agaro sought out a pick-up band with just such ties on his visit. Trombonist Jeb Bishop and bassist Kent Kessler are long-standing members of various Vandermark ensembles. Drummer Robert Barry is a standing member of the Sound in Action Trio, though his employment with Vandermark represents only the apex of the iceberg of Chicago musical credentials with a C.V. dating back to Sun Ra’s fledgling 50s combos in the city.
At first blush D’Agaro doesn’t appear to give his sidemen’s higher profile employer much mind, but there are telling similarities in their methods and preferences. D’Agaro doesn’t go so far as to affix dedications to each piece, but the studio program still scrolls out as one of multifarious and overlapping influences. The figures of Ellington and Leadbelly percolate to the top most frequently and a studious breadth of jazz history becomes evident in D’Agaro’s technique and temperament. Wielding tenor and clarinet his tone and phrasing are drier here than on his earlier Strandjutters and generate a consistent calefactory friction with Bishop’s own coppery-tasting enunciations. His maneuvers on licorice stick refract a rogue’s gallery of past players from the bubbly bop effervescence of Buddy DeFranco to the mercurial mood swings of Perry Robinson. Tenor tracks a trajectory from burnished Ben Webster croons to rip-snorting Aylerian wails.
Barry doesn’t sound all that comfortable on the more conceptual pieces like “Ultramarine #13.” Instead of loosening and abstracting his metrical touch he simply lessens the frequency of his stick play, creating greater space through sporadic impact on the skins and rims. It’s a forgivable enough tactic, but one that sometimes falls flat in the contrastive context of his colleagues’ adaptability. Kessler evinces his usual levels of harmonic and rhythmic expertise, spurring the foursome from a largely backseat slot, but soloing adroitly as the opportunity arises as on “Barry K.”
Call it a personal failing of vision, but I’ve never much grasped the desire of advanced jazz improvisers to adapt folk blues tunes to their repertoires. D’Agaro’s refurbishing of the Leadbelly ditty “Dick’s Holler” does little to endear the exercise. A substantial element of the composer’s charm was his ability to preserve skeletal melodies through cunningly simple guitar and button accordion play coupled to coarse hewn vocals, all sans trappings or frills. The boiled down end product left emotional veracity and an unadorned authenticity in bold relief. Juxtaposed, D’Agaro’s exacting Dixieland approach turns it almost into an academic exercise. It’s a relatively minor minus to album populated mainly by plusses. His cover of Ellington’s “Sweet Zurzday” exhibits a fluidity and temerity that Vandermark could take a few notes from.
While hardly an epiphany experience this disc still offers satistfying small group jazz in the classicist-cum-modernist vein that constitutes the free jazz answer to neo-conservativism.
~ Derek Taylor
Posted by derek on May 16, 2005 5:08 PMDerek, I find this album completely dull.
Just don't get which "few notes" Vandermark could take from it, really.
The former D'Agaro on hatOLOGY was ok (but not more than that).
This one is totally meaningless.
What can I say, LeMo? Maybe you’re a more uncompromising & punctilious critic than me? You definitely like to come at things with the gloves off and bare knuckles brandished; a trait I admire on occasion. I enjoyed both this disc & Strandjutters (though the edge IMO goes to the latter). Maybe you can share with us what you find so “completely dull” & “meaningless” about it? Neither descriptor seems to fit by my estimation.
As far as my Vandermark comment: I found D’Agaro’s interpretation of that Ellington tunesmore clever & engaging than the majority of the selections from the V5’s “free jazz classics” fakebook, esp. those rendered on Alchemia.
Posted by: derek at May 18, 2005 3:16 PMDerek, I've nothing against you and my comment wasn't an agression against you. If you've filled that way, sorry, not my intention.
You know that my english is way too short to go in further explanation that my "epidermic one". But I will try anyway.
By the way, I think that you point yourself one of the big flaw of this record: a drummer completely out of context, here (Robert Barry was great with Anderson and Vandermark, though, so it's not an attack against the quality of the musician) when this kind of music needs a drummer who make it to comes alive (just imagine "Strandjutters" without Bennink). The drummer must have a sense of HUMOUR to play this music what is not what I feel either, here. For the rest, there's no interplay between Kessler, Bishop and D'Angelo, at least not an interesting interplay. The Bass and the trombone are just their competent self, but nothing more. Just that: their competent self, even in the only tune where they improvised "collectivelly"...
Well, don't have the vocabulary to dig more deeply but let's just imagine than Vandermark recorded this disc. What a general laugh all over, don't you think?
As D'Agaro is concern, the guy is a very good tenor, no problem. Maybe a better one than Vandermark will never be. But what the meaning today to write tunes who sound exactly as a a bop or pre-bop composition? I don't get it.
And aniway, this kinf of "mix" has already been done and with much greater effect by a musician called Franz Koglman.
Only Koglman, when writting his own compositions, didn't try to imitate the musicians he celebrates in his records (who are about the same than D'Agaro admires). What he wrote was radically different and it's the contrast between his music and, let say, a Duke Ellington tune - what separate them but what also make them work together through the time and the space - who was fascinating to hear in his best disc (by the way, they both recorded "Sweet Zurzday", Koglman on "We thought about Duke" with Lee Konitz - Guess who wins?)
To me this is where stand the "meaningless" who seems to have hurt your feeling: it has been done better and don't need to be re-done again.
So, what will D'Agaro do next? Got a quintet, this time, for doing the same thing the same way again? For what purpose ultimately? The fun of it? Yeah, but without me this time.
Of course, it's "feel" and not "filled" that I mean. But you have make the correction yourself.
Posted by: LeMo at May 18, 2005 5:45 PMLeMo, I didn’t mean to imply any sort of offense taken at your comments; on the contrary, I welcome them. Part & parcel with posting these reviews comes the expectation that folks generously taking the time to read them will sometimes (maybe often?) disagree with what I (& the other Bags authors) have to say. And your English is light years ahead of my French so I appreciate you indulging me by expanding on your original post.
Good points on Barry, Bennink and Koglmann (I’d forgotten about the last one’s version of “Sweet Zurzday, need to go dig it up & spin it). Though I’m not sure it’s a question of it having been “done better” in the past. D’Agaro is far from the only younger player trafficking in this sort of repertory-influenced free-bop currency. Gotta disagree with you on Bishop and Kessler too, I think they both add appreciably to this date. As for the “sense of humor” I found it more in evidence on Strandjutters than here. This date seems more of a by-the-numbers venture overall, but I don’t think the down-to-business-like demeanor of the music is necessarily a bad thing (sorry for all the colloquialisms :) Not sure D’Agaro has in store for us next, but I must admit I’m curious.
Can anyone else break the deadlock LeMo and I seem to be embroiled in with a deciding vote?
Posted by: derek at May 18, 2005 7:09 PMSorry, friends. I think this one is just okay, so I can't give a truly deciding vote. I'm reviewing this one for Dusted and giving it average marks. Pretty typical stuff in a lot of ways, enjoyable but not memorable. I'd hoped that Barry and Bishop could be quirky enough to shake things up a bit, but I don't really think they do. In truth, I'm kinda surprised that Hat is putting this stuff out. But it ain't my label.
Posted by: Jason at May 18, 2005 7:18 PMBiv, that's funny, your phrase "enjoyable but not memorable" pretty much encapsulates my opinion too.
Posted by: derek at May 18, 2005 7:42 PMI'll cast a little more lukewarm water on this disc too. I just don't fathom why Hatology/WXU bothered to release this. Strandjutters is allrightbutdull too; this one is a bit better I guess, but really, we're splitting hairs here.
Barry is kinda lumpy & quirky & offkilter in an interesting but not entirely useful way--with a different front line I could see this working better.
Posted by: ND at May 18, 2005 8:41 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................
