Jimmy Halperin / Dominic Duval / Jay Rosen - Joy & Gravitas (CIMP)

Jazz history is often boiled down to a procession of geniuses and innovators. There's a certain truth to that; but I can't help wondering: what would jazz history look like as a history of mavericks? The answer to that question would probably require a close look at the Cadence/CIMP family of labels, which makes a specialty of figures who don’t fit easily on anyone's map. Though both labels' catalogues contain their fair share of meat'n'potatoes free-jazz blowouts, a high proportion of the list is genuinely one-of-a-kind discs – the kind of quirky musicmaking that most producers try frantically to normalize out of existence. This tolerance of idiosyncrasy doesn’t always pay off (the notorious Braxton-with-standup-comic CIMP comes to mind), but you’re usually guaranteed a few discs in every fresh batch of Cadence/CIMP releases (and they tend to come fast'n'furious) that are not merely worthwhile but genuinely unique musical documents.

Saxophonist Jimmy Halperin's new disc fits this profile pretty well. He's a protégé of Lennie Tristano and Sal Mosca, and his most prominent recorded appearances so far have been on Warne Marsh's Back Home and a duo with Mosca, Psalm. So, latterday Tristano-school –- already the "maverick" tag is firming up. But what’s he doing here with Dominic Duval and Jay Rosen, more usually found behind Joe McPhee in Trio-X? I'm tempted to see this as part of a larger pattern – Connie Crothers has been known to turn up at the Vision Festival, and Liz Gorrill's been doing very strange (and, frankly, terrible) experimental stuff lately under the name Kazzrie Jaxen. To be sure, the program is virtually all familiar standards and jazz classics, which sets it apart from the majority of CIMP sessions. But Halperin's delivery, even on ballads, is hectic and wilfully over-the-top: he blows so hard the notes are perpetually on the verge of cracking; solos are full of fast, angry trills and obsessive downwards flutters that don't go anywhere in particular. The arrangements are again almost wilfully revisionary: Duval's counterlines on "My Funny Valentine" and "Love for Sale", for instance, are virtually at odds with the tunes. Some of this just doesn't come off: the first take of "Don't Explain" ends messily, for instance, and "Witch Hunt" features an excessively harsh soprano solo and is marred by Rosen's overenthusiastic bomb-dropping. But there are some memorably effective pieces here too, including a "Naima" unlike any you’ve heard before (how often do you hear it delivered with a hint of anger?), a demonic "Night in Tunisia", and a bruising cover of Hendrix's "Spanish Castle Magic". A very mixed bag, then -- but sufficiently audacious that it's still worth hearing. There’s nothing else in my record collection quite like it.

~ Nate Dorward